Goya, disasters of war

I stared looking at Goya's series of prints called the Disasters of War by looking into how it came about, I found that he produced 82 prints between 1810 and 1820, but were not put out until 1863.

I began looking through some of the prints he created, I think they were possibly political statements etchings and I read that they were in relation to what he had witnessed in the Peninsular war in 1807 – 1814.
The first image that really grabbed my attention was this one...

"Disparate general (General folly)"

I consider myself quite a morbid person, and while I was looking through these images although very powerful and violent, they did not shock me. Although it made me think about what kind of reaction he wanted to give to the viewer.

The more I looked at this image, the more I noted the darkness in it, in tone and in message, to me obviously on purpose.

I noticed the background has little to no detail in it and I noticed this in a lot of these etchings... they all appear to have a darkness in the backgrounds, it gives me the feeling of emptiness all around what is happening in the etchings. Here is another example of this I found.

"Modo de volar (A way of flying)"

"El caballo raptor (Kidnapping horse)"

I liked these, I liked the darkness to them again both in appearance and message, and it made me quite interested in trying out etching for myself. :)