CATEGORY | 1 day programs | Reina Sofia Museum tours |
EXPERIENCE | Intense Madrid |
PLACE | Museo Reina Sofía |
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN | Modern Art |
The Reina Sofía Museum is Spain’s contemporary art gallery in Madrid, and, covering contemporary art from 1881 till today, it deserves also a full-day scholar-led visit.
From Symbolism to the most recent art trends, the Reina Sofía Museum (MNCARS) provides a Spanish perspective on contemporary art.
The morning could be devoted to the 1881-1939 period, shown at 2nd floor of the Sabatini building (the old 18th century building housing most of the collection). Picasso, Miró and Dalí are in command of this 2nd floor, together with their Spanish forerunners, as well as Spanish and foreign colleagues (Juan Gris, Braque, Léger, Man Ray, Julio González, Alexander Calder …). That crucial period of historical avant-gardes (Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism…) was also a period of social and political unrest, culminating with Spanish Civil War and WW2.
Art and history are therefore intertwined in this collection as they are in very few other art galleries in the World. Its first director recently said that the Reina Sofía has become an extraordinary history museum. The way the 2nd floor is articulated around Guernica and the Spanish Pavilion at Paris 1937 International Exhibition is remarkable.
The afternoon could be devoted to the post-WW2 period: an opportunity to learn more about how Paris was dethroned by New York, how abstraction became medullar in modern art, how artists influenced themselves from both sides of the Atlantic, how we’ve reached the myriad of artistic movements existing after the 1960’s,…
And again, Spanish art will be a prism through which we will see the evolution of Franco’s regime during almost 40 years and of Spain during the recent decades of democracy.
You will be master of your tour: you choose whether you want to be guided or just receive explanations on the paintings that you want to know better; you decide when you want to sit in front of a painting or sculpture and when you would like to sit at the coffee shop to chat about the 1930’s experimental film or 1950’s documentary that you’ve just seen at the Reina Sofía; you decide whether you have lunch at the cafeteria or outside and resume your visit in the afternoon.
The aim of this tour is that you obtain the most of your visit to the Reina Sofía, a museum with generous opening hours (10am-8pm/ please check on sundays)
If you wish information on this private guided full-day tour of Museo Reina Sofía, fill the form and we will contact you.
