Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid

The Queen Sofia Museum in Madrid, also known as the Reina Sofia Museum, is the national center and museum of contemporary art of the 20th century (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía). Located at the end of the Prado Boulevard, next to the great Atocha Square, the Reina Sofia Museum occupies a six-storey monumental building, erected in 1781 by Francisco Sabatini, considered the best mayor of Madrid.
In the 18th century, the building was originally a hospital, but after its reconstruction in 1980 it was perfectly adapted and turned into a museum. The Pinakothek was officially opened in 1988 by King Juan Carlos and his wife Sofia, after whom the cultural center is named. The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid is one of the largest museums in the world. The permanent collection from the 20th century is dedicated mainly to Spanish art, but the museum also has many works by prominent foreign artists. The rich collections of 10,000 paintings represent the huge variety of contemporary art with all its modern trends.
17 of the exhibition halls of the Reina Sofia Museum smoothly transport visitors through the world of modernism from the early twentieth century to the outbreak of World War II. On the border between the two centuries in the Basque Country and Catalonia, a group of post-impressionist artists such as Ignacio Suloaga, Francisco Inturino, Ermenehildo Anglada-Camarasa and others worked. Juan Gris, Pablo Gargayo, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró are among the favorites to present currents such as constructivism, cubism and Dadaism. The monumental work of Picasso's Guernica, painted in a moment of unbridled outburst of anger after the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica by German aviation and dedicated to the victims of the Civil War and especially the massacred, is of great interest.
The incredible experience of viewing Salvador Dali's works, including The Great Masturbator, is a sure sign that he is steadily entering surrealism, with the Spanish pioneer in this style of art, cinematographer Luis Buñuel, honored with the Queen Sofia Museum his surrealist films. The figurative works and early paintings of Anthony Tapies and the geometric abstractions of Serge Polyakov and the more lyrical Andre Mason complete the collection of the Reina Sofia Museum with works of the post-war artistic revival.
The foreign presence at the Reina Sofia National Center for Contemporary Art is highlighted by the strong works of Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, Pierre Aleshinski and Azger Jorn, culminating in the brilliant performance of the brilliant French artist Yves Klein and Italian - master of cut and pierced sails.
Antonio Saura's energetic drawing stands out alongside foreign artists such as Jean Dubuffe, Yves Klein and Marc Tobey, as well as other colorful names who have contributed to post-war art. American minimalists such as Dan Flavin and Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman and Bruce Naumann, as well as organic sculptures by Basque artist Eduardo Chilida, worthily complete the collection of 10,000 paintings representing the vast variety of contemporary art with all its modern trends.
The Reina Sofia Museum also has a freely accessible library with specialized art literature. It contains over 100,000 books and about 3,500 audio and 1,000 videos. The Queen Sofia Museum organizes exhibitions of works by contemporary artists from around the world. Donations and redemptions of valuable works are constantly growing. All that synthesizes the dynamics of a collection in constant evolution, undoubtedly turns the Reina Sofia Art Center into a museum of the XX century for the XXI century.