The origins of the MNCARS date back to the Museum of Modern Art "Museo de Arte Moderno (Spain)") (MAM), an institution created in 1894 and inaugurated four years later, which was located in the southwest corner of the National Library and Museum Palace. It started with the works of the artists of the century after Goya, although over the years new pieces were incorporated, many of them paintings from the 19th century, which gained increasing prominence in the collection and simultaneously relegated the nineteenth-century works, which were increasingly seen as a burden on the image of modernity that the museum was intended to give. In this way, a group of artists, led by the architect José Luis Fernández del Amo, achieved that by Decree of October 9, 1951, the Museum of Modern Art was divided into two, the National Museum of Art of the century and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, without changing location, leaving the Museum of Contemporary Art with the lower part of the headquarters and the Museum with the upper part.[12] Fernández del Amo was its first director, a position in which he remained until 1958.[13] However, in 1968 both collections were reunited, forming the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (MEAC), although the unification was short-lived, since by Ministerial Order of February 5, 1971, the "Section of 19th Century Art" of the Prado Museum was created, which involved the transfer of the works of the century to this museum, which were exhibited in the Casón del Buen Retiro since June 24 of that year, when said section was inaugurated, while the pieces of the century remained in the MEAC until its dissolution and its integration into the Reina Sofía.

Subsequently, the collection was moved to its new headquarters in the University City of Madrid. In the first quarter of 1991, all the works that were there, 8900, were moved to the MNCARS building.[14] The ground floor of the Ciudad Universitaria building became attached to the National Exhibition Center, and the rest to the Museum of the Spanish People, integrated since 1993 into the National Museum of Anthropology "Museo Nacional de Antropología (Spain)"). Since 2004, after a rehabilitation, the entire building has served as the headquarters of the Costume Museum.

Located in the Sabatini building, the former General Hospital of Madrid, which was rehabilitated by Antonio Fernández Alba, José Luis Íñiguez de Onzoño and Antonio Vázquez de Castro, the museum was officially inaugurated on May 26, 1986 as Reina Sofía Art Center, in honor of Queen Sofía of Spain. It opened with several exhibitions. One with a vision of the future called Culture Processes and New Technologies, an exhibition composed of different sections, Video art curated by Paloma Navares, Electronic Graphics by Juan Carlos Eguillor, Electrography curated by Marisa González, CDRom, Electroacoustic Music, Laser, Sound Art and Holography curated by Vicente Carretón; in addition to presenting the work of the historic Spanish artist-inventor Val del Omar, etc. Another exhibition established a dialogue between 3 established Spanish artists, Eduardo Chillida, Antonio Saura and Antoni Tàpies, with Georg Baselitz, Twombly and Richard Serra, with the aim of confronting Spanish contemporaneity with its foreign analogues.[15]​.

The initial objective of the new institution was to host temporary exhibitions (hence its name center and not museum), but two years later, by Royal Decree 535/1988, of May 27, it became a state museum, taking the name Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.[16] It opened its doors to the public on September 10, 1992, with artistic funds from the MEAC. Its new status as a national museum brought with it a very active policy of purchases and obtaining loans, in order to be able to show a solid repertoire of Spanish art in connection with international currents.

The institution is an autonomous body dependent on the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. In 2013, the museum's own statute was approved.[17]​.

The need for larger spaces led to the construction of a new building in 2001, commissioning its construction to architect Jean Nouvel; The extension was inaugurated in September 2005. The new spaces represented an increase of more than 60% compared to the surface of the old building: from 51,297 m² to 84,048 m².[18]​.

The Reina Sofía Museum is, therefore, divided into two buildings, called Sabatini and Nouvel, plus two exhibition venues in the Retiro Park: the Palacio de Cristal and the Palacio de Velázquez, both built by the Spanish architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco. These last two venues host temporary exhibitions or special presentations by artists or works from the museum's collection.[19]​.

Contenido

Cronológicamente, la colección retoma el hilo temporal de la del Museo del Prado, al cubrir el periodo que va de finales del siglo a la actualidad. El Real Decreto 410/1995, de 17 de marzo, replanteó las colecciones estatales, marcando el año de nacimiento de Picasso (1881) como línea divisoria entre el Prado y el Reina Sofía, un criterio que se ha cuestionado como demasiado rígido y que va siendo diluido por las últimas iniciativas de este museo, como la incorporación de ejemplos de Goya y Sorolla.[20]​.

La trayectoria del arte moderno y contemporáneo en España, ignorado durante décadas por el coleccionismo privado y los organismos públicos, explica que haya muchas lagunas en el repertorio internacional del museo, si bien cuenta con algunos ejemplos relevantes de múltiples artistas desde Pierre Bonnard hasta Louise Bourgeois. La colección toma como núcleo el arte español contemporáneo y lo contextualiza en las corrientes internacionales con ejemplos de autores extranjeros, haciendo hincapié en aquellos vinculados con España, como Robert y Sonia Delaunay, André Masson, Francis Picabia, Alexander Calder, Torres García, Rafael Barradas o Wifredo Lam.

El inventario de bienes artísticos comprendía, a septiembre de 2014, 18 145 obras, entre las que se incluyen 3408 pinturas, 1654 esculturas e instalaciones, 3148 dibujos, 5502 grabados, 3630 fotografías, 346 piezas de vídeo, cine y audiovisuales, 354 de artes performativas e intermedia y 98 de arquitectura, diseño y artes decorativas. De ellas se exponen 1100, un 6%.[21]​ Por otra parte, también se exhiben algunas piezas cedidas en depósito por terceros con el fin de completar los fondos propios del museo.

En septiembre de 2014 se hizo público el legado que la coleccionista Soledad Lorenzo planea donar al Museo, y que consiste en casi 400 piezas de importantes artistas como Antoni Tàpies, Txomin Badiola, Miquel Barceló, José María Sicilia, José Manuel Broto o Eduardo Chillida, entre otros.[22]​.

Early 20th century

The collection starts with Spanish authors from the turn of the century, such as Ramón Casas, Anglada Camarasa, Romero de Torres, Ignacio Zuloaga, Isidro Nonell, Joaquín Mir, María Blanchard, López Mezquita, Julio González, Santiago Rusiñol, José Clará, Francisco Iturrino, Julio Antonio or José Gutiérrez Solana (a painter whose archive was also acquired in 1999).[23]​.

They are artists belonging to various trends, such as Modernism "Modernism (art)"), Realism or the incipient Cubism, a reflection of the variety of art at the beginning of the century. According to more stylistic than chronological criteria, the repertoire on display ignored artists such as Joaquín Sorolla, whose absence was alleviated with the oil painting Arrival of the Fishing, deposited by the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias.[24]​.

Contemporary international artists, such as Pierre Bonnard, George Grosz, Medardo Rosso, Albert Marquet, Kandinsky, Joaquín Torres García and Willi Baumeister are also present in the collection.

The collection of works belonging to Cubism is of great importance, adding to the paintings of Picasso and Gris those of Georges Braque (Bottle and Fruits, 1911; Playing Cards and Dice, 1914), Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Amédée Ozenfant and other authors such as Robert and Sonia Delaunay, as well as sculptures by Henri Laurens, Jacques Lipchitz and himself. Picasso. This repertoire has benefited from a temporary extendable loan agreement, signed by the Telefónica Foundation in 2016, of 33 cubist works owned by said company.[25]​.

Important for the museum's discourse and almost unprecedented in Spain is the presence of Oskar Schlemmer, one of the great artists of the Bauhaus, and the figurines he made for the Ballet Triádico (1922) can be seen in the museum, thanks to a long-term loan from his descendants.[26]​.

The set of works ascribed to surrealism and related movements is also outstanding, and brings together a very varied list of authors: Francis Picabia (of whom there is an excellent representation, with paintings and drawings), René Magritte (Le secret du cortège, 1927; Grelots roses, ciels en lambeaux, 1930), Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Brassaï, Victor Brauner, Jean Arp, Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters (Dadaist collages), Max Ernst or Joseph Cornell. Very notable is the collection of works by the Frenchman André Masson, in which the oil paintings La famille en état de métamorphose (1929) or La sorcière (1942-43) stand out, as well as numerous drawings and sketches related to bullfighting and Spanish landscapes.

Gris, Picasso, Dalí and Miró

The Reina Sofía Museum has excellent collections of Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, four Spanish artists who are among the most important of the century and whose works constitute the great strength of the museum.

The repertoire of Madrid-born Juan Gris is singularly rich, despite having had to be brought together in its entirety in recent decades, since his first work was not incorporated into Spanish national collections until a very late date. It was La guitare devant la mer (The guitar before the sea), purchased in 1977 for the MEAC.[27]​ However, currently the author's collection already includes nineteen paintings,[28]​ among which are some of his best works, such as La bouteille d'anis (The anise bottle) (1914), Portrait de Madame Josette Gris (Portrait of Madame Josette Gris) (1916) or the aforementioned The guitar before the sea (1925).

The representation of Picasso in the museum focuses on the 1930s, since although the artist's collection has gradually been strengthened with several acquisitions, the presence of works from other periods remains limited. The earliest work by this artist that the Reina Sofía preserves is Woman in Blue, from 1901, belonging to the so-called "Blue Stage".[29] It is followed by two paintings of analytical Cubism "Cubism") (The Fruit Bowl, 1910, and The Dead Birds, 1912), others surrealist, several in his expressionist style from the 1930s and there are also some from his last years (three great canvases on the theme The painter and the model, from 1963). The collection consists of a total of 292 works, including 29 paintings,[24]​ and four of his main sculptures: Tête de femme (Fernande) (Woman's Head [Fernande]), considered the first Cubist sculpture,[30]​ Femme au jardin (Woman in the Garden), La femme au vase (The Offering Lady) and L'homme au mouton (The Man with the Lamb), as well as drawings and prints. Among the latter, Dream and lie of Franco and La Minotauromaquia stand out. However, it does not have any representation of its important work in the field of ceramics.

The museum's best-known work is undoubtedly the Guernica "Guernica (painting)"), one of the most relevant and iconic works of modern art, which is exhibited along with multiple preparatory sketches and original photographs that document its creation, taken by Dora Maar. The painting and some of the sketches were kept for decades at the MOMA in New York and arrived in Spain in 1981, initially being deposited in the Casón del Buen Retiro, until the group was moved to this museum in 1992. Picasso had painted this work commissioned by the Government of the Second Republic, to decorate the Pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. Another work for the same pavilion, the sculpture , by Alberto Sánchez, presides over the entrance to the MNCARS; This is a replica since the original was destroyed.

Spanish art of the second half of the 20th century: from abstraction to Pop art

Spanish figurative art from the central decades of the century has examples of artists such as Pablo Gargallo, Pancho Cossío, Francisco Arias Álvarez, Francisco Bores, Benjamín Palencia, Maruja Mallo, Alberto Sánchez, the surrealist Óscar Domínguez, José de Togores, Ángeles Santos Torroella, Joaquín Sunyer and Joan Ponç.

For its part, the abstract route from mid-century in Spain features works by sculptors Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida, the latter present with some large pieces weighing several tons. Other authors are: Pablo Palazuelo, Pablo Serrano, Antoni Tàpies, Manuel Millares, Lucio Muñoz, Luis Feito, Gerardo Rueda, Rafael Canogar, José Guerrero "José Guerrero (painter)"), Esteban Vicente, Eusebio Sempere, Equipo 57, Gustavo Torner, Antonio Saura; later figurative artists, such as Antonio López García and Carmen Laffón, to finally lead to the "Pop art" aesthetic, followed (with variants) by Equipo Crónica, Luis Gordillo, Eduardo Arroyo or Guillermo Pérez Villalta.

Renowned Spanish authors, such as Miquel Barceló, Jaume Plensa or Juan Muñoz "Juan Muñoz (sculptor)"), together with young artists who have developed their work in recent decades, complete the complete tour of contemporary Spanish art and its contributions to the world art scene.[33]​.

International art of the second half of the 20th century

The presence of foreign artists has been increasing in the museum's collections in a notable way, especially with regard to the second half of the century.

The mid-century collection includes works by Diego Rivera (Flower Seller, 1949), Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Henry Moore, Anthony Caro, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Francis Bacon "Francis Bacon (painter)") (Lying figure, 1966), Yves Klein (sculptures and paintings, including one of his famous Anthropometries), Nancy Spero, Jean Tinguely, Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky, Pol Bury, Constant (the last four, members of the CoBrA group), Lucio Fontana (Concetto spaziale. La Fine di Dio, 1963) or Christo.

Artists from trends as different as Tachisme (Jean Dubuffet, Henri Michaux, Wols, Jean Fautrier, Serge Poliakoff), Pop art (Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton "Richard Hamilton (artist)"), Alex Katz), Conceptual art (Joseph Kosuth, Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Cildo Meireles, Marcel Broodthaers), abstraction in its various modalities, Arte Povera are represented. (Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Luciano Fabro"), Jannis Kounellis), Kinetic Art (Alexander Calder, Jesús Soto), Land Art or minimalism (Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre). From this last movement there was the opportunity in 1988 to acquire, under very advantageous economic conditions, a substantial part of the Panza di Biumo collection, one of the best in the world, but the Reina Sofía refused the offer.[34]​ For its part, American abstract expressionism, despite its significance in art after the Second World War, is one of the contemporary movements most poorly represented in the museum, due to its high price in the market.[35]​ There are barely two works by Mark Rothko, Sam Francis and Cy Twombly, three by Robert Motherwell (including one from his most notable series, Elegía to the Spanish Republic), and many others by Morris Louis (Vernal, Crown (Corona) and Lamed Beth, all of them belonging to his series Veils (Veils) -the last two bequeathed by his widow-),[36]​ and there is nothing by Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning or Clyfford Still.

Artists from the end of the century such as those of the Fluxus movement (Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Robert Filliou, Öyvind Fahlström), Anish Kapoor, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Richard Serra, Julian Schnabel (series of paintings To the People of Spain, 1991), Martin Kippenberger, Olafur Eliasson, etc., show the latest trends in contemporary art at the level international.

2009: reorganization

When Manuel Borja-Villel took over as director in 2008, a position he held until January 2023,[37] he promoted a new plan to reorganize its collections. The museum presented this plan on May 28, 2009, considering it the most profound in twenty years. Its main novelties were the breaking of the merely linear criterion of the previous arrangement, the mixture of disparate authors forming thematic rooms, and the incorporation of numerous new and stored works, as well as engravings by Francisco de Goya, with copies initially lent by the Prado Museum and later by the National Chalcography. Goya is considered a precursor of several modern trends but was excluded from this museum due to chronological limitations.

The new arrangement begins on the second floor of the Sabatini Building"), with works up to the 1930s. It continues on the fourth floor of the same building, with art ranging from the post-war period to the early 1960s; this section was rearranged again in 2010. The route goes to the first floor of the new Nouvel Building, and concludes on the ground floor of said building, with the most recent works.

2021: Communicating Vessels

In November 2021, the Museum presents the rearrangement of its Permanent Collection, called Communicating Vessels.[38]​ It is arranged on four floors of the Sabatini building, including new rooms specifically enabled for this rearrangement, and on two of the floors of the Nouvel extension. With 70% new pieces, and trying to place the collection in relation to the problems of the present, this new presentation aims to increase the presence of women artists; photographic, bibliographical and architectural collections; as well as addressing topics such as colonialism, feminism, ecology, or the 15-M movement.[39]​.

Communicating Vessels is divided into 8 episodes, which cover artistic practices from 1881 to the present day:

1. • Avant-garde territories. City, architecture and magazines.

2. • The lost thought.

3. • Field closed.

4. • Double exhibition: art and the Cold War.

5. • The enemies of poetry: resistance in Latin America.

6. • A drunken ship: eclecticism, institutionality and disobedience in the eighties.

7. • Device 92. Can History be rewound?

8. • Exodus and life together.

The Museum has given essential prominence to temporary exhibitions throughout its history, with reference exhibitions such as Paris Despite Everything: Foreign Artists (1944-1968), curated by Serge Guilbaut; Atlas: how to carry the world on your back, curated by Georges Didi-Huberman; Los Esquizos de Madrid, curated by Ivan L. Munuera; or Manhattan Mixed Use, curated by Douglas Crimp.

At the beginning of its career as a museum and art center, with the permanent collection not yet completely outlined, the exhibitions were a fundamental complement, since they hosted artists or trends that were barely or not at all represented in the permanent collection. With the passage of time, important anthologies have been held that complete or complement what exists in the museum: thus, those dedicated to Antonio López in 1993, Picasso in 2006 or Dalí in 2013 have been relevant, all of them with excellent reception from the public.[40]​.

The MNCARS Library and Documentation Center is a library specialized in contemporary art that gathers, preserves and disposes of bibliographic and documentary collections related to the artistic practices of the centuries and centuries. The Library includes the Central Archive, which preserves the documentation generated by the institution itself in the development of its functions.[41]​ Since 2005, the headquarters of the Library and Documentation Center have been located in the Nouvel Building of the museum, being originally located on the third floor of the Sabatini Building of the institution.[42]​ It is open to the outside by large windows, and contains a large glass lens from the Real Fábrica de Cristales La Granja designed by the same Nouvel presiding over the reading room[43].

The main objective of the Library is to provide citizens with access to its funds and collections, which include more than monographs, 3,500 sound recordings, nearly 1,000 videos, 2,500 periodical publications and archival documents.[44] Among its notable funds, its collections of photobooks, artist books, ephemera, comics or fanzines are significant, as well as its personal archives, which house the documentation compiled by institutions and artists such as José Gutiérrez Solana, Miguel Trillo[45]​ or Elena Asins.[46]​.

The digitized materials can be consulted online from the catalog or through LaDigitaldelReina, a digital platform launched in 2022 that contains a collection of more than 27,000 digital objects, including books, paintings, magazines, audios or videos.[47]​.

The Library and Documentation Center includes Space D, an exhibition room that organizes documentary samples around the bibliographic and documentary collections of the institution, as well as those of other institutions that have documents as their main axis of research. In recent years, it has programmed the documentary exhibitions Chronicles of a Discourse, around the Juana Mordó Archive housed in the Library,[48]​ ilimit, around the homonymous work by Isidoro Valcárcel Medina,[49]​ or With a lowercase h, which presents a selection of documents from the 15M Archive in relation to the Paris Commune.[50]​.

As part of its desire to make its funds and services visible and dynamic, the Library has been articulating the Almost Books mediation program since 2021, which includes a program of visits to the Library and the Collection, workshops, and a reading club.[51]​.

The main building of the museum is the old General Hospital of Madrid, a large neoclassical building of the century commissioned by Carlos III and initially designed by José de Hermosilla and later continued by Francesco Sabatini, although only part of the project was built. The planned building reached Atocha Street and the main façade that is seen today was going to be that of one of the interior patios. Its unfinished state explains why practically none of the ornamentation was carried out, which is the reason for its severe and naked appearance.

Saved from demolition by being declared a listed building, from 1980 extensive renovations and additions were made. In 1988 parts of the new museum were opened to the public, mainly to house temporary exhibitions; That same year, a decree declared it a National Museum, which forced it to rethink its collections in order to offer a convincing panorama of Spanish art of the century. Precisely the coexistence of both functions, museum and exhibition center, has caused some friction and criticism, since it is considered that it cannot cover them on its own.

In December 2001, construction began on a large extension designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, on the site of the former headquarters of the National Distance Baccalaureate Institute (INBAD). Inaugurated on September 26, 2005, its plan is shaped like a truncated triangle, and it has a central patio under a red roof, perhaps its most peculiar element.

• - Royal Association of Friends of the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum.

• - Madrid Public Art Museum.

• - Museum of Contemporary Art (Madrid) "Museum of Contemporary Art (Madrid)").

• - Museum of Modern Art "Museum of Modern Art (Spain)").

• - Reina Sofía Museum Radio.

• - Communicating Vessels Collection.

• - Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category on Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

• - Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum in the Monumentamadrid catalogue.

• - Official website.

• - Virtual visit to the museum on Google Art Project.

The origins of the MNCARS date back to the Museum of Modern Art "Museo de Arte Moderno (Spain)") (MAM), an institution created in 1894 and inaugurated four years later, which was located in the southwest corner of the National Library and Museum Palace. It started with the works of the artists of the century after Goya, although over the years new pieces were incorporated, many of them paintings from the 19th century, which gained increasing prominence in the collection and simultaneously relegated the nineteenth-century works, which were increasingly seen as a burden on the image of modernity that the museum was intended to give. In this way, a group of artists, led by the architect José Luis Fernández del Amo, achieved that by Decree of October 9, 1951, the Museum of Modern Art was divided into two, the National Museum of Art of the century and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, without changing location, leaving the Museum of Contemporary Art with the lower part of the headquarters and the Museum with the upper part.[12] Fernández del Amo was its first director, a position in which he remained until 1958.[13] However, in 1968 both collections were reunited, forming the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (MEAC), although the unification was short-lived, since by Ministerial Order of February 5, 1971, the "Section of 19th Century Art" of the Prado Museum was created, which involved the transfer of the works of the century to this museum, which were exhibited in the Casón del Buen Retiro since June 24 of that year, when said section was inaugurated, while the pieces of the century remained in the MEAC until its dissolution and its integration into the Reina Sofía.

Subsequently, the collection was moved to its new headquarters in the University City of Madrid. In the first quarter of 1991, all the works that were there, 8900, were moved to the MNCARS building.[14] The ground floor of the Ciudad Universitaria building became attached to the National Exhibition Center, and the rest to the Museum of the Spanish People, integrated since 1993 into the National Museum of Anthropology "Museo Nacional de Antropología (Spain)"). Since 2004, after a rehabilitation, the entire building has served as the headquarters of the Costume Museum.

Located in the Sabatini building, the former General Hospital of Madrid, which was rehabilitated by Antonio Fernández Alba, José Luis Íñiguez de Onzoño and Antonio Vázquez de Castro, the museum was officially inaugurated on May 26, 1986 as Reina Sofía Art Center, in honor of Queen Sofía of Spain. It opened with several exhibitions. One with a vision of the future called Culture Processes and New Technologies, an exhibition composed of different sections, Video art curated by Paloma Navares, Electronic Graphics by Juan Carlos Eguillor, Electrography curated by Marisa González, CDRom, Electroacoustic Music, Laser, Sound Art and Holography curated by Vicente Carretón; in addition to presenting the work of the historic Spanish artist-inventor Val del Omar, etc. Another exhibition established a dialogue between 3 established Spanish artists, Eduardo Chillida, Antonio Saura and Antoni Tàpies, with Georg Baselitz, Twombly and Richard Serra, with the aim of confronting Spanish contemporaneity with its foreign analogues.[15]​.

The initial objective of the new institution was to host temporary exhibitions (hence its name center and not museum), but two years later, by Royal Decree 535/1988, of May 27, it became a state museum, taking the name Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.[16] It opened its doors to the public on September 10, 1992, with artistic funds from the MEAC. Its new status as a national museum brought with it a very active policy of purchases and obtaining loans, in order to be able to show a solid repertoire of Spanish art in connection with international currents.

The institution is an autonomous body dependent on the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. In 2013, the museum's own statute was approved.[17]​.

The need for larger spaces led to the construction of a new building in 2001, commissioning its construction to architect Jean Nouvel; The extension was inaugurated in September 2005. The new spaces represented an increase of more than 60% compared to the surface of the old building: from 51,297 m² to 84,048 m².[18]​.

The Reina Sofía Museum is, therefore, divided into two buildings, called Sabatini and Nouvel, plus two exhibition venues in the Retiro Park: the Palacio de Cristal and the Palacio de Velázquez, both built by the Spanish architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco. These last two venues host temporary exhibitions or special presentations by artists or works from the museum's collection.[19]​.

Contenido

Cronológicamente, la colección retoma el hilo temporal de la del Museo del Prado, al cubrir el periodo que va de finales del siglo a la actualidad. El Real Decreto 410/1995, de 17 de marzo, replanteó las colecciones estatales, marcando el año de nacimiento de Picasso (1881) como línea divisoria entre el Prado y el Reina Sofía, un criterio que se ha cuestionado como demasiado rígido y que va siendo diluido por las últimas iniciativas de este museo, como la incorporación de ejemplos de Goya y Sorolla.[20]​.

La trayectoria del arte moderno y contemporáneo en España, ignorado durante décadas por el coleccionismo privado y los organismos públicos, explica que haya muchas lagunas en el repertorio internacional del museo, si bien cuenta con algunos ejemplos relevantes de múltiples artistas desde Pierre Bonnard hasta Louise Bourgeois. La colección toma como núcleo el arte español contemporáneo y lo contextualiza en las corrientes internacionales con ejemplos de autores extranjeros, haciendo hincapié en aquellos vinculados con España, como Robert y Sonia Delaunay, André Masson, Francis Picabia, Alexander Calder, Torres García, Rafael Barradas o Wifredo Lam.

El inventario de bienes artísticos comprendía, a septiembre de 2014, 18 145 obras, entre las que se incluyen 3408 pinturas, 1654 esculturas e instalaciones, 3148 dibujos, 5502 grabados, 3630 fotografías, 346 piezas de vídeo, cine y audiovisuales, 354 de artes performativas e intermedia y 98 de arquitectura, diseño y artes decorativas. De ellas se exponen 1100, un 6%.[21]​ Por otra parte, también se exhiben algunas piezas cedidas en depósito por terceros con el fin de completar los fondos propios del museo.

En septiembre de 2014 se hizo público el legado que la coleccionista Soledad Lorenzo planea donar al Museo, y que consiste en casi 400 piezas de importantes artistas como Antoni Tàpies, Txomin Badiola, Miquel Barceló, José María Sicilia, José Manuel Broto o Eduardo Chillida, entre otros.[22]​.

Early 20th century

The collection starts with Spanish authors from the turn of the century, such as Ramón Casas, Anglada Camarasa, Romero de Torres, Ignacio Zuloaga, Isidro Nonell, Joaquín Mir, María Blanchard, López Mezquita, Julio González, Santiago Rusiñol, José Clará, Francisco Iturrino, Julio Antonio or José Gutiérrez Solana (a painter whose archive was also acquired in 1999).[23]​.

They are artists belonging to various trends, such as Modernism "Modernism (art)"), Realism or the incipient Cubism, a reflection of the variety of art at the beginning of the century. According to more stylistic than chronological criteria, the repertoire on display ignored artists such as Joaquín Sorolla, whose absence was alleviated with the oil painting Arrival of the Fishing, deposited by the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias.[24]​.

Contemporary international artists, such as Pierre Bonnard, George Grosz, Medardo Rosso, Albert Marquet, Kandinsky, Joaquín Torres García and Willi Baumeister are also present in the collection.

The collection of works belonging to Cubism is of great importance, adding to the paintings of Picasso and Gris those of Georges Braque (Bottle and Fruits, 1911; Playing Cards and Dice, 1914), Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Amédée Ozenfant and other authors such as Robert and Sonia Delaunay, as well as sculptures by Henri Laurens, Jacques Lipchitz and himself. Picasso. This repertoire has benefited from a temporary extendable loan agreement, signed by the Telefónica Foundation in 2016, of 33 cubist works owned by said company.[25]​.

Important for the museum's discourse and almost unprecedented in Spain is the presence of Oskar Schlemmer, one of the great artists of the Bauhaus, and the figurines he made for the Ballet Triádico (1922) can be seen in the museum, thanks to a long-term loan from his descendants.[26]​.

The set of works ascribed to surrealism and related movements is also outstanding, and brings together a very varied list of authors: Francis Picabia (of whom there is an excellent representation, with paintings and drawings), René Magritte (Le secret du cortège, 1927; Grelots roses, ciels en lambeaux, 1930), Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Brassaï, Victor Brauner, Jean Arp, Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters (Dadaist collages), Max Ernst or Joseph Cornell. Very notable is the collection of works by the Frenchman André Masson, in which the oil paintings La famille en état de métamorphose (1929) or La sorcière (1942-43) stand out, as well as numerous drawings and sketches related to bullfighting and Spanish landscapes.

Gris, Picasso, Dalí and Miró

The Reina Sofía Museum has excellent collections of Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, four Spanish artists who are among the most important of the century and whose works constitute the great strength of the museum.

The repertoire of Madrid-born Juan Gris is singularly rich, despite having had to be brought together in its entirety in recent decades, since his first work was not incorporated into Spanish national collections until a very late date. It was La guitare devant la mer (The guitar before the sea), purchased in 1977 for the MEAC.[27]​ However, currently the author's collection already includes nineteen paintings,[28]​ among which are some of his best works, such as La bouteille d'anis (The anise bottle) (1914), Portrait de Madame Josette Gris (Portrait of Madame Josette Gris) (1916) or the aforementioned The guitar before the sea (1925).

The representation of Picasso in the museum focuses on the 1930s, since although the artist's collection has gradually been strengthened with several acquisitions, the presence of works from other periods remains limited. The earliest work by this artist that the Reina Sofía preserves is Woman in Blue, from 1901, belonging to the so-called "Blue Stage".[29] It is followed by two paintings of analytical Cubism "Cubism") (The Fruit Bowl, 1910, and The Dead Birds, 1912), others surrealist, several in his expressionist style from the 1930s and there are also some from his last years (three great canvases on the theme The painter and the model, from 1963). The collection consists of a total of 292 works, including 29 paintings,[24]​ and four of his main sculptures: Tête de femme (Fernande) (Woman's Head [Fernande]), considered the first Cubist sculpture,[30]​ Femme au jardin (Woman in the Garden), La femme au vase (The Offering Lady) and L'homme au mouton (The Man with the Lamb), as well as drawings and prints. Among the latter, Dream and lie of Franco and La Minotauromaquia stand out. However, it does not have any representation of its important work in the field of ceramics.

The museum's best-known work is undoubtedly the Guernica "Guernica (painting)"), one of the most relevant and iconic works of modern art, which is exhibited along with multiple preparatory sketches and original photographs that document its creation, taken by Dora Maar. The painting and some of the sketches were kept for decades at the MOMA in New York and arrived in Spain in 1981, initially being deposited in the Casón del Buen Retiro, until the group was moved to this museum in 1992. Picasso had painted this work commissioned by the Government of the Second Republic, to decorate the Pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. Another work for the same pavilion, the sculpture , by Alberto Sánchez, presides over the entrance to the MNCARS; This is a replica since the original was destroyed.

Spanish art of the second half of the 20th century: from abstraction to Pop art

Spanish figurative art from the central decades of the century has examples of artists such as Pablo Gargallo, Pancho Cossío, Francisco Arias Álvarez, Francisco Bores, Benjamín Palencia, Maruja Mallo, Alberto Sánchez, the surrealist Óscar Domínguez, José de Togores, Ángeles Santos Torroella, Joaquín Sunyer and Joan Ponç.

For its part, the abstract route from mid-century in Spain features works by sculptors Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida, the latter present with some large pieces weighing several tons. Other authors are: Pablo Palazuelo, Pablo Serrano, Antoni Tàpies, Manuel Millares, Lucio Muñoz, Luis Feito, Gerardo Rueda, Rafael Canogar, José Guerrero "José Guerrero (painter)"), Esteban Vicente, Eusebio Sempere, Equipo 57, Gustavo Torner, Antonio Saura; later figurative artists, such as Antonio López García and Carmen Laffón, to finally lead to the "Pop art" aesthetic, followed (with variants) by Equipo Crónica, Luis Gordillo, Eduardo Arroyo or Guillermo Pérez Villalta.

Renowned Spanish authors, such as Miquel Barceló, Jaume Plensa or Juan Muñoz "Juan Muñoz (sculptor)"), together with young artists who have developed their work in recent decades, complete the complete tour of contemporary Spanish art and its contributions to the world art scene.[33]​.

International art of the second half of the 20th century

The presence of foreign artists has been increasing in the museum's collections in a notable way, especially with regard to the second half of the century.

The mid-century collection includes works by Diego Rivera (Flower Seller, 1949), Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Henry Moore, Anthony Caro, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Francis Bacon "Francis Bacon (painter)") (Lying figure, 1966), Yves Klein (sculptures and paintings, including one of his famous Anthropometries), Nancy Spero, Jean Tinguely, Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky, Pol Bury, Constant (the last four, members of the CoBrA group), Lucio Fontana (Concetto spaziale. La Fine di Dio, 1963) or Christo.

Artists from trends as different as Tachisme (Jean Dubuffet, Henri Michaux, Wols, Jean Fautrier, Serge Poliakoff), Pop art (Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton "Richard Hamilton (artist)"), Alex Katz), Conceptual art (Joseph Kosuth, Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Cildo Meireles, Marcel Broodthaers), abstraction in its various modalities, Arte Povera are represented. (Mario Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Luciano Fabro"), Jannis Kounellis), Kinetic Art (Alexander Calder, Jesús Soto), Land Art or minimalism (Donald Judd, Robert Mangold, Ellsworth Kelly, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre). From this last movement there was the opportunity in 1988 to acquire, under very advantageous economic conditions, a substantial part of the Panza di Biumo collection, one of the best in the world, but the Reina Sofía refused the offer.[34]​ For its part, American abstract expressionism, despite its significance in art after the Second World War, is one of the contemporary movements most poorly represented in the museum, due to its high price in the market.[35]​ There are barely two works by Mark Rothko, Sam Francis and Cy Twombly, three by Robert Motherwell (including one from his most notable series, Elegía to the Spanish Republic), and many others by Morris Louis (Vernal, Crown (Corona) and Lamed Beth, all of them belonging to his series Veils (Veils) -the last two bequeathed by his widow-),[36]​ and there is nothing by Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning or Clyfford Still.

Artists from the end of the century such as those of the Fluxus movement (Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Robert Filliou, Öyvind Fahlström), Anish Kapoor, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Richard Serra, Julian Schnabel (series of paintings To the People of Spain, 1991), Martin Kippenberger, Olafur Eliasson, etc., show the latest trends in contemporary art at the level international.

2009: reorganization

When Manuel Borja-Villel took over as director in 2008, a position he held until January 2023,[37] he promoted a new plan to reorganize its collections. The museum presented this plan on May 28, 2009, considering it the most profound in twenty years. Its main novelties were the breaking of the merely linear criterion of the previous arrangement, the mixture of disparate authors forming thematic rooms, and the incorporation of numerous new and stored works, as well as engravings by Francisco de Goya, with copies initially lent by the Prado Museum and later by the National Chalcography. Goya is considered a precursor of several modern trends but was excluded from this museum due to chronological limitations.

The new arrangement begins on the second floor of the Sabatini Building"), with works up to the 1930s. It continues on the fourth floor of the same building, with art ranging from the post-war period to the early 1960s; this section was rearranged again in 2010. The route goes to the first floor of the new Nouvel Building, and concludes on the ground floor of said building, with the most recent works.

2021: Communicating Vessels

In November 2021, the Museum presents the rearrangement of its Permanent Collection, called Communicating Vessels.[38]​ It is arranged on four floors of the Sabatini building, including new rooms specifically enabled for this rearrangement, and on two of the floors of the Nouvel extension. With 70% new pieces, and trying to place the collection in relation to the problems of the present, this new presentation aims to increase the presence of women artists; photographic, bibliographical and architectural collections; as well as addressing topics such as colonialism, feminism, ecology, or the 15-M movement.[39]​.

Communicating Vessels is divided into 8 episodes, which cover artistic practices from 1881 to the present day:

1. • Avant-garde territories. City, architecture and magazines.

2. • The lost thought.

3. • Field closed.

4. • Double exhibition: art and the Cold War.

5. • The enemies of poetry: resistance in Latin America.

6. • A drunken ship: eclecticism, institutionality and disobedience in the eighties.

7. • Device 92. Can History be rewound?

8. • Exodus and life together.

The Museum has given essential prominence to temporary exhibitions throughout its history, with reference exhibitions such as Paris Despite Everything: Foreign Artists (1944-1968), curated by Serge Guilbaut; Atlas: how to carry the world on your back, curated by Georges Didi-Huberman; Los Esquizos de Madrid, curated by Ivan L. Munuera; or Manhattan Mixed Use, curated by Douglas Crimp.

At the beginning of its career as a museum and art center, with the permanent collection not yet completely outlined, the exhibitions were a fundamental complement, since they hosted artists or trends that were barely or not at all represented in the permanent collection. With the passage of time, important anthologies have been held that complete or complement what exists in the museum: thus, those dedicated to Antonio López in 1993, Picasso in 2006 or Dalí in 2013 have been relevant, all of them with excellent reception from the public.[40]​.

The MNCARS Library and Documentation Center is a library specialized in contemporary art that gathers, preserves and disposes of bibliographic and documentary collections related to the artistic practices of the centuries and centuries. The Library includes the Central Archive, which preserves the documentation generated by the institution itself in the development of its functions.[41]​ Since 2005, the headquarters of the Library and Documentation Center have been located in the Nouvel Building of the museum, being originally located on the third floor of the Sabatini Building of the institution.[42]​ It is open to the outside by large windows, and contains a large glass lens from the Real Fábrica de Cristales La Granja designed by the same Nouvel presiding over the reading room[43].

The main objective of the Library is to provide citizens with access to its funds and collections, which include more than monographs, 3,500 sound recordings, nearly 1,000 videos, 2,500 periodical publications and archival documents.[44] Among its notable funds, its collections of photobooks, artist books, ephemera, comics or fanzines are significant, as well as its personal archives, which house the documentation compiled by institutions and artists such as José Gutiérrez Solana, Miguel Trillo[45]​ or Elena Asins.[46]​.

The digitized materials can be consulted online from the catalog or through LaDigitaldelReina, a digital platform launched in 2022 that contains a collection of more than 27,000 digital objects, including books, paintings, magazines, audios or videos.[47]​.

The Library and Documentation Center includes Space D, an exhibition room that organizes documentary samples around the bibliographic and documentary collections of the institution, as well as those of other institutions that have documents as their main axis of research. In recent years, it has programmed the documentary exhibitions Chronicles of a Discourse, around the Juana Mordó Archive housed in the Library,[48]​ ilimit, around the homonymous work by Isidoro Valcárcel Medina,[49]​ or With a lowercase h, which presents a selection of documents from the 15M Archive in relation to the Paris Commune.[50]​.

As part of its desire to make its funds and services visible and dynamic, the Library has been articulating the Almost Books mediation program since 2021, which includes a program of visits to the Library and the Collection, workshops, and a reading club.[51]​.

The main building of the museum is the old General Hospital of Madrid, a large neoclassical building of the century commissioned by Carlos III and initially designed by José de Hermosilla and later continued by Francesco Sabatini, although only part of the project was built. The planned building reached Atocha Street and the main façade that is seen today was going to be that of one of the interior patios. Its unfinished state explains why practically none of the ornamentation was carried out, which is the reason for its severe and naked appearance.

Saved from demolition by being declared a listed building, from 1980 extensive renovations and additions were made. In 1988 parts of the new museum were opened to the public, mainly to house temporary exhibitions; That same year, a decree declared it a National Museum, which forced it to rethink its collections in order to offer a convincing panorama of Spanish art of the century. Precisely the coexistence of both functions, museum and exhibition center, has caused some friction and criticism, since it is considered that it cannot cover them on its own.

In December 2001, construction began on a large extension designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, on the site of the former headquarters of the National Distance Baccalaureate Institute (INBAD). Inaugurated on September 26, 2005, its plan is shaped like a truncated triangle, and it has a central patio under a red roof, perhaps its most peculiar element.

• - Royal Association of Friends of the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum.

• - Madrid Public Art Museum.

• - Museum of Contemporary Art (Madrid) "Museum of Contemporary Art (Madrid)").

• - Museum of Modern Art "Museum of Modern Art (Spain)").

• - Reina Sofía Museum Radio.

• - Communicating Vessels Collection.

• - Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category on Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

• - Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum in the Monumentamadrid catalogue.

• - Official website.

• - Virtual visit to the museum on Google Art Project.