Lille (AFP)

For the first time since its destruction over 100 years ago, the legendary "Domaine du Sourd", place of life and creation of the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), was partially rebuilt on the occasion of 'an unprecedented immersive exhibition.

Entitled "Goya Experience", the exhibition, which opens on Friday at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, invites the visitor to explore the art of the master of the beautiful and the strange through forty works by the painter. , among which "Les Jeunes" and "Les Vieilles", two enigmatic masterpieces held by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

Immersive videos, soundscapes ... The exhibition route has been designed to offer the visitor an aesthetic and sensory experience.

It opens with a graphic reproduction of the facade of the "Domaine du Sourd" (Quinta del Sordo), a rural property that the artist had bought on the right bank of the Manzanares river, in Madrid.

This is where Goya lived before going into exile in Bordeaux.

A visitor in a room of the "Goya Experience" exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille on October 12, 2021 DENIS CHARLET AFP

Although he only stayed there for a few years, the Spanish master had time to make his famous Black Paintings there, which are also shown in the exhibition.

Imagined by Régis Cotentin, co-curator of the exhibition, this visual reconstruction soberly reconstructs - without furniture - the living room and dining room of this place of life and creation.

"It is here that he lived, where he received and at the same time where he dined, he had lunch (...) and it is also there where he received his friends, so he lived among his paintings", details to AFP M. Cotentin.

Despite his exile in France and his deafness, Goya was "a bon vivant. He loved life, women, Humanity ... but who obviously never ceased to represent his vices", continues the commissioner.

A visitor in a room of the "Goya Experience" exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille on October 12, 2021 DENIS CHARLET AFP

The estate survived his death and the paintings were saved at the end of the 19th century.

The reproduction is also based on the photos of the French Jean Laurent, who had immortalized the house in 1874.

The exhibition also brings together other artists such as the Spanish painter Salvador Dali, the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson or the British Jake and Dinos Chapman.

All, in their own way, interpreters of Goya's macabre and mysterious universe.

© 2021 AFP