The Reina Sofia Museum is one of the most important art galleries in the country, and has some of the most important key works to understand the art of the 20th century. The museum’s collection includes works produced between the end of the 19th century and the present day. It has more than 23,000 works, of which a selection of approximately 5% is exhibited, including all types of artistic techniques: paintings, sculptures, drawings, graphic art, photographs, installations, video, film, decorative arts and architecture.
It has four different sites: the main headquarters, consisting of the Sabatini and Nouvel buildings, and the sites in the Retiro Park, the Velázquez Palace and the Crystal Palace. After several years of work, the Queen Sofia Museum has completed one of its most important projects: the reorganization and expansion of the Collection, which opened in 2021.
In order to be located within the museum’s collection, it should be noted that this reorganization means that the eight episodes into which the exhibition is divided do not follow a strictly chronological order, but are grouped under thematic and historical headings.
Essential works of the Reina Sofía Museum
For a quick tour of the best-known works of the Reina Sofia Museum, focus on the first three episodes, which are located on the second and fourth floors of the Sabatini building.
On floor two is Episode 1, called Territorios de vanguardia: ciudad, arquitectura y revistas. Paris, Madrid and Barcelona are the settings and art centers of most of the works that coexist in this space. Here are photographs by Federico García Lorca at La Barraca; paintings by great artists such as María Blanchard, Sonia Delaunay and photographs by Dora Maar; key works of the Surrealist movement by Dalí, Magritte, Maruja Mallo or Man Ray; and Cubist artists such as Juan Gris and Georges Braques; among other works of fundamental artistic relevance for understanding the last century.
Episodes two and three are located on the fourth floor and expose related and opposing themes at the same time. The first focuses on the Republican exiles perfectly represented by Josep Renau, Remedios Varo and Max Aub in Mexico or Maruja Mallo in Argentina. There are also key works by Dalí, such as The Enigma of Hitler, and by international artists such as Calder. Episode 3 deals with autarky in Spain through the works of José Solana, Gregorio Prieto or Luis Castellanos.
where is Picasso’s Guernica?
One of the great attractions of the Reina Sofia Museum is Picasso’s Guernica. The work, which was returned to Spain in 1981, had been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since World War II, where it was kept until, as its author wrote, democratic freedoms were restored in Spain.
From the year 1992 when the Reina Sofía Museum inaugurated its permanent exhibition, rooms 205 and 206 on the second floor were dedicated to the work, accompanied by the photographs that Dora Maar, the Malaga painter’s partner and artist, took during the creation of the painting, as well as a multitude of Picasso’s sketches of the work. Both provide information on the magnitude and complexity of the painting, not only because of its large dimensions, but also because of the message of violence and heartbreak that it wants to convey.