Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Reina Sofia

Because I had time to kill before my evening flight out of Madrid, and because I was by myself and can do crazy things like this, I spent an entire Monday wandering through the whole of the Reina Sofia art museum.

Literally, the whole thing.

It took 5 and a half hours.

And I was about to fall over from two sore feet and a very hungry stomach by the time I left, but it was so worth it.

Here are the highlights:


The funky sculpture in the courtyard. This apparently is not the main entrance, but it's where I ended up [I wasn't lost, I swear!] and conveniently, because I needed to stash my backpack, where the lockers are located.


The Reina Sofia is probably most famous for being the home of Picasso's Guernica, the stunningly large painting that was his reaction to the Civil War bombing of the city. Seeing it in person made my mind jump to Kseniya Simonova's sand art, which reminded me just how easily you could apply this same reaction to the events in Ukraine in the past few months.


I was excited to run into Alexander Calder mobiles [not literally, but for some of them it was a close call] throughout the museum. I don't even remember where I first heard of him, but I really enjoy his work.

There were a billion and one special exhibits throughout the museum, but only two cool enough for me to pick up pamphlets after walking through them.

First up was El cosmos y la calle [The Cosmos and the Street], a collection by the painter Wols. He was born in Germany with the name Otto Wolfgang Schulze, but ran off to France due to his dislike of the Nazis and changed his name. He actually started out as a photographer before turning to painting. The piece that popped out at me the most was It's All Over the City. Most of his artwork is actually untitled, and the ones that are were named by his wife.

The title card at the museum read It's All Over and the City which I loved. Come to find out that's not the real title.
The other painting that really stuck with me was Obedient Faces, part of the Ghosts, Brides and Other Companions exhibit of works by Elly Strik. I absolutely loved this entire exhibit. One of her inspirations is Francisco de Goya, which translates really well for her first show in Spain. She's apparently not as famous, so there's not a great picture of the painting online, but I did manage to screenshot this from the exhibit's web page.

My favorite is the one on the right.
The meat statue. Yeah. It seems to have been part of a parade in Kansas or somewhere and then ended up on the terrace at the museum.


Then there were some truly weird modern art exhibits/statement pieces. And this comes from someone who loves abstract art. There were film clips playing all over the place too, some of them showing a certain artistic type of film-making, which was really cool, and some...just because? [They were mostly foreign or documentaries. The only one I recognized was Rear Window, and that's mostly thanks to Castle.]

The Reina Sofia is obviously not the most famous museum in Spain, or even Madrid, but I really enjoyed it. I got really lucky in the fantastic exhibits that they have going right now. And it was the perfect break in sightseeing. Next stop: Morocco!

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