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The Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid is housed in a neoclassical building. The structure was originally built as a hospital and served that purpose until 1986 when the Reina Sofía Art Center was opened.
Today, modern glass-and-steel elevator towers stand out on the building.
For several decades, it has hosted contemporary art for both temporary and permanent exhibitions, featuring masterpieces by artists such as Dalí, Miró and especially Picasso.
The museum gives particular emphasis to Spanish painters such as Dalí, Miró, and Picasso.
However, the most important work remains the Guernica.
The indescribable emotion of seeing the famous and monumental painting Guernica by Picasso, painted in just two months, is unparalleled.
Nevertheless, this extraordinary museum contains many works, making it one of the most fascinating permanent exhibitions in all of Spain.
Picasso created the large canvas in two months to present it at the 1937 International Exposition of Arts and Techniques in Paris.
The Guernica is a manifesto against the violence of Franco’s army during the civil war.
Major European states did not intervene in the conflict, and the government pushed to bring Picasso to the Exposition, hoping that his manifesto would help secure aid from European powers.
Picasso created a shocking work, drawing from the devastating bombing of Guernica, painting it without colors to emphasize the drama of the scene and the violence of war.
In the painting Man with a Pipe by Joan Miró, his aversion to conventional painting is highlighted by a representation of the figure that is almost ghostly and unsettling, with very few descriptive details. Miró, “the most surrealist,” focuses not on the object itself, but on the way it is rendered on the canvas.
Finally, Salvador Dalí with The Girl at the Window.
In this painting, Dalí experiments with the depth of the image, playing with inserting a painting within the painting like a visual matryoshka.
