The Reina Sofia
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, at the end of Calle Atocha and the Paseo del Prado's cultural mile, got its start when the need arose to find a use for an existing historic building, in this case the Hospital General, which had deteriorated to the point of closing in 1965. The building was saved from demolition by a historic-monument designation and at nearly 400,000 square feet is now one of the world's biggest museums. On my visit, many, many rooms were closed "for maintenance," as well as the entire third floor.
The Reina Sofia houses many works by Pablo Picasso, including his "Lady in Blue," which was ignored by the jury in the 1901 national art exhibition. The Spanish painter was so pissed that he didn't bother to retrieve it, thus remaining property of the museum, where it languished forgotten for decades in a warehouse.
"Guernica," the most famous painting of the 20th century, is on the second floor and is flanked by two attendants to make sure you don't take a photo. I was struck by its sheer size ― more than 25 feet wide ― and by how monochromatic it is. I don't know why that should surprise me; maybe the reproductions I have seen over the years have been "boosted" somehow. I briefly sketched the screaming horse so you don't feel left out.
The permanent collection is all about 20th century Spanish art, doing a chronological circuit through the country's leading figurative painters leading to the first avant-garde movement and "Guernica," through to Surrealism. Maybe 25% of the collection relates to the social and political tensions that gave rise to the three-year Spanish Civil War (1936-39). No photos are allowed at all on the critical second floor. There's a lot to chop up here, so let's get going. Here's a quick list of the items that demanded my interest (with some photos swiped from the museum's website):
• David Smith's "Medals for Dishonor," a series of 15 circular reliefs ― almost like 10-inch minted coins with themes like "Bombing Civilian Populations," "Munition Makers" and "Death by Bacteria," below.
• Jacques Lipchitz's patinated plaster sculpture "Figure With Guitar" (1925). Always nice to see a Lipchitz; he was one of my dad's patients.
• Maria Blanchard is new to me. Her flat, interlaced shapes forming "Woman With a Fan" show an artist developing her own brand of Cubism in 1916.
• Joan Miro's 1928 "Spanish Dancer" collage ― a deliberately nonsensical work defying any traditional art classification and the kind of thing that makes gallery goers either chuckle or swear off art altogether.
• An edition of Un Cadavre newspaper featuring Andre Breton's Second Manifesto of Surrealism.
• Picasso's "Woman in a Garden" sculpture (1930), and who knows what he's trying to do here other than have fun with a new medium. Create a new art language, certainly, but to what end I do not know. No point is the point, I guess. A lot of overlap between the surrealists and Dadaists.
• Eleuterio Bauset's terrifying "Air Raid" from 1937 shows a huddled family of three, the mother possibly already dead, awaiting the worst from the German Condor Legion's Junkers bombers.
A trip to the fourth floor is worth it. Not only can you remove your lens cap, but there currently is an exhibit called "Surrealist Exile in Mexico" featuring Dali's "Enigma of Hitler" as well as this Diego Rivera, "Flower Vendor," from 1949.
An adjoining room is showing Mexican graphic art from the early 20th century, with a lot of panels depicting obscure gunbattles and assassinations.
There is a pleasant courtyard with fruiting magnolias and a playful "Moonbird" (1966) by Joan Miro.
I heartily recommend a visit to the Museo Reina Sofia. There is much meat on this bone, but do not be lulled by anodyne descriptions of it as merely a repository of the nation's 20th century art. It is very much a political museum.
