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I recently returned to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, drawn by a temporary exhibition that a friend simply could not miss. Officially called Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, this museum focusses on modern and contemporary art, from the 20th century to the present day. Housed in a former hospital, the collection includes more than twenty thousand works by both Spanish and international artists. As with El Prado and its masterpieces, the Reina Sofía can also feel disorienting because of the amount of rooms and artworks. Especially if you are short on time, in this post I suggest ten pieces, by ten different artists, which in my opinion should be included in your visit to the museum.
The Reina Sofía Museum has an admission ticket that you can buy online at no extra cost, and it will allow you to skip the queue, which is often endless. The last two hours of opening each day, on the other hand, are free of charge, but the queue is often even longer!
10 must-see artworks at the Reina Sofía Museum
The Reina Sofía deserves half a day if you want to see all the rooms in the collection. If you have less time, here are 10 artworks by 10 artists that I particularly enjoyed. As when I spoke about the 10 paintings to see at the Prado Museum, these have also been chosen according to my personal interests and taste.
My virtual tour is in alphabetical order so as not to do anyone an injustice. However, there is one exception: the masterpiece that simply has to open the proceedings: Picasso’s Guernica!
1. Guernica – Pablo Picasso
An artistic, historical and political masterpiece by Pablo Picasso, Guernica is the undisputed highlight that attracts 2 million tourists to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid every year.
In case you are not familiar with the story of Guernica, here is a brief overview. It is 1937, and while Paris organises the International Exhibition, a Civil War is being fought in Spain. Picasso is living in Paris and paints Guernica to draw public attention to what is happening in his homeland. The immense work, in fact, depicts the horror and devastation of war. The inspiration is the terrible bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, which in just a few hours reduced everything to rubble and decimated the civilian population. However, with Franco’s rise to power in Spain in 1949, the painting remained outside the country for four decades. Picasso explicitly requested that the artwork should not be returned to Spain until the country finally became a republic, free from inconvenient dictatorships. Guernica therefore arrived in Madrid only in 1981.
Occupying an entire wall of the museum, Guernica is striking for its scale, its monochrome palette and, for those who know a little about art, its symbolism. It has, of course, been defined as a Cubist painting, but also as Symbolist, Expressionist and, why not, Surrealist. There is also a famous anecdote or legend connected to it, in which Picasso gives an extremely cold reply to a German general visiting his studio during the Nazi occupation of Paris:
"Did you make this horror, master?"
"No, you did."
Of course, the Reina Sofía also has a long list of other artworks by Picasso. Among the most famous I would mention the Post-Impressionist Mujer en Azul, which always reminds me of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland!
2. Allegoria della Guerra – Isaias Cabezón
Let us stay in these pre-Second World War years and on the theme of the Spanish Civil War, and here is another rather sombre painting: Alegoría de la Guerra (“Allegory of War”) by Isaias Cabezón. This time the artist is Chilean, but he lived in Europe for a long time, especially in Madrid and Paris, like many of his contemporaries.
The painting is quite unsettling, with marching soldiers, broken objects, dead people and a gas mask in the foreground that leaves little to the imagination. I would subtitle it “Anxiety”.
3. Mercury Fountain – Alexander Calder
The only sculpture in a world of painting (in my personal list of favourite artworks) is the Mercury Fountain by Alexander Calder. It is one of the many abstract kinetic sculptures by the American artist, but the only one that shared the Spanish Pavilion with Picasso’s Guernica at the 1937 Paris Exhibition.
The one displayed at the Reina Sofía Museum is a 1:3 scale maquette of the original work, which is not in Madrid. Rather cheeky of the Spaniards! However, it is still fascinating to see these colourful pieces of iron, aluminium and mercury balancing and moving with a breath of air. It is no coincidence that this model is protected by a glass cube all around it.
4. Girl at the Window – Salvador Dalí
Dalí is famous for his melting clocks, figures with extremely long legs, endless desert landscapes filled with strange characters, pierced rocks, and his dreamlike and slightly mad themes. His Surrealism is so unique that it can be recognised in every one of his paintings. Much like his moustache!
For people like me, who do not know a great deal about art, his Cubist, Impressionist and Realist periods are far less well known. Girl at the Window comes from one of these lesser-known, early periods. Perhaps it is not his most fascinating painting. But I especially like it when compared with the painterly madness of the following years. It conveys a sense of calm that Dalí’s Surrealist paintings simply do not have.
5. Naturaleza Viva – Maruja Mallo
Maruja Mallo is a Spanish artist who spent almost her entire life in Mexico. In the permanent collection of the Reina Sofía Museum you can see La Verbena (a Spanish word defining an open-air concert/party), a cheerful painting filled with numerous characters and curious figures depicted in Mallo’s distinctive style. However, I liked other paintings even more, which are not usually displayed in this museum. I was in fact lucky enough to visit the Reina Sofía for the second time during a temporary exhibition dedicated to this very artist. Here I am showing you Naturaleza Viva (“Living Nature”), a painting of incredible simplicity, but for some reason it really touched me. Also notice the beautiful stylised signature (at the top left), typical of Mallo!
6. Grelots Roses, Ciels en Lambeaux – René Magritte
I’ ha’ve always liked Magritte. He is quirky enough to attract my attention, but not excessively unsettling like some of the others mentioned earlier. His men in bowler hats, for example, intrigue me. As do the pipes, clouds, eggs and other slightly random objects from his famous Surrealist period.
Grelots Roses, Ciels en Lambeaux (“Pink Bells, Tattered Skies”) is a double painting featuring some of Magritte’s typical elements. He chooses two (almost) complementary colours and places them side by side. Then he adds two subjects that have nothing to do with each other: clouds and bells. And he leaves it all there, open to the viewer’s interpretation. What do you think he wanted to communicate? Tell me in the comments!
7. Man with a Pipe – Joan Miró
Perhaps the Reina Sofía has more famous paitings by Miró, such as Caracol, Mujer, Flor, Estrella (“Snail, Woman, Flower, Star”). But I chose to show you Man with the Pipe because I simply fell in love with it. It is an incredibly simple Surrealist/Abstract painting. A stylised blue little man on a background of the same colour, a few lines, some black dots, and a small ball on the side, the only slightly three-dimensional element in the image. And then there is a red diagonal line in one corner.
What is that red line? Why is it there? What does it mean? Is the third dot on the little man’s/alien’s face a nose or a mouth? Is he blowing the little ball? Why does the ball have a shadow while the rest does not? Does it represent smoke? And the three black lines below? The dots? The more I look at it, the less I understand. Wonderful.
8. Un Mondo, di Ángeles Santos
Un Mundo (“A World”) is a large painting by the Surrealist artist Ángeles Santos. The name can be misleading: it is neither Ángel nor Ángela. It is Ángeles, plural. And it belongs to a Spanish woman who passed away a few years ago at almost a hundred year old. The artwork Un Mundo occupies an entire wall at the Reina Sofía, measuring a full 3×3 metres. It is packed with details and has a distorted perspective, with each element tilted in a different direction. To appreciate all the details, you need to get quite close, which may annoy other visitors. But after all, you paid for the ticket, and this painting is worth it.
Santos painted Un Mundo while still a teenager, semi-unknown in the international art scene of her time. Yet with this Surrealist marvel, exhibited at the Salón de Otoño in Madrid in 1929, she immediately earned the fame she deserved.
9. End of the World (The Triunph of Death) – José Gutiérrez Solana
Macabre paintings always capture the public’s attention, and this work by José Gutiérrez Solana is no exception. The subtitle alone, The Triumph of Death, speaks for itself. But if that were not clear enough, there are around thirty skeletons walking across the scene to remove all doubt.
The image depicts the drama of people confronting death, physical or moral sin, and the possible punishment that follows. The symbolism is, of course, strong. Themes such as hopelessness, the inexorability of the situation, and innocence in the face of tragedy can also be read. Some characters more or less obviously represent the seven deadly sins. For instance, the greed of the wealthy man in the front row, who is promptly robbed by two mischievous skeletons. It is a kind of Dantean Inferno, with skeletons in place of demons.
If you like José Gutiérrez Solana, I also recommend taking a look at La Tertulia del Café de Pombo (“The Gathering at the Café de Pombo”). A different theme, but the style and colours are frankly quite similar.
10. Il Generalissimo – Cèsar Pedro Pèrez
Last but not least, in the prints section at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, there are some gems not to be missed. Among those on the theme of war and Nazism, I loved El Generalisimo (a play on words that could be translated with “The super General”). It is an anti-fascist poster from the time of the Spanish Civil War, signed by Cèsar Pedro Pèrez. The image is a satirical caricature of Franco and his supporters: the army, capitalists, and the Church. The controversy speaks for itself.
You could also be interested in:
The 10 must-see paintings in El Prado Museum in Madrid
Disclaimer: I am not an art expert nor a tour guide. Everything I have written on this page about the artworks mentioned comes from information provided by the Reina Sofía Museum, a Lonely Plantet guidebook, the internet, or my personal observations during my visit to Madrid. If any details are incorrect, please send me a message with references to the correct information, and I will make sure to correct them!
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