Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

I love weekends in Madrid. Aside from a great nightlife, the days can be spent touring some of the world's most renown works of art for free. Last weekend I visited the Reina Sofía Art Museum, which boasts 2 floors of modern art including Picasso's, Guernica, and Dalí's, The Great Masturbator. The museum completes Madrid's so-called Golden Triangle of Art, which consists of the city's three most impressive museums.

For a little history of the museum (complements of Wikipedia)...

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art (informally shortened to the Museo Reina Sofía, Queen Sofia Museum, or simply The Sofia). The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain. It is located in Madrid, near the Atocha train and metro stations, at the southern end of the so-called Golden Triangle of Art (located along the Paseo del Prado and also comprising the Museo del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza).


GUERNICA (1937) (Pablo PICASSO)
Oil on canvas (349 x 776 cm)
Reina Sofía National Museum

This is more a cartoon on canvas than a picture. A cartoon without text because everything "is written" in this image. Picasso (later affiliated to the French Communist Party) was a defendant of the Spanish Republic, which made him a loyal artist, well-know all over the world.
In fact, in January 1937, the picture was commissioned by the Republican government to decorate the Spanish stand at the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris, with a clear propaganda context. That's why the painting is so big: it was to be admired by a lot of people at the same time in a scene that wasn't like a showing.

Two months later the terrible bombing of Guernica took place (26th April 1937) and it was turned into the ideal subject for the picture. But curiously and thanks to the painter's great ability there are no signs of war in it, no bombs, nor soldiers or guns. The main subjects are from bullfighting: horse and bull in a moment of bullfighting and a fugitive mother with her dead son in her arms. As usual of Picasso, his private life is reflected in his artistic themes. In this case and due to its political undertone, it caused great controversy, though years later this painting became a pacifist manifesto.

Picasso took a month in finishing the picture, which was made in black and grey tones to emphasize dramatism and highlight the message. Short of time, he used sketches from his previous works to get the painting finished quickly. His partner at that time, photographer Dora Maar, took photographs of the process of development of the painting.

Today, this painting is fundamental to Modern Art and anyone who looks at it closely cannot be left feeling indifferent.


THE GREAT MASTURBATOR (1929) (Salvador DALÍ)
(El Gran Masturbador)
Oil on canvas (110 x 150 cm.)
Reina Sofía National Museum

This picture formally contains characteristics of all his surrealistic painting: the whole balanced unity despite the large number of subjects and the huge space that joins sky and ground in the distance.
Dalí was himself surreal, which allowed him to portray his own life and all his obsessions in his works.
One of them was sex. A deep and good judge of Freud's theories, Dalí didn´t hide his personality nor his problems, which he showed both in his paintings and his interviews. This open personality made the difference between him and other surreal artists.
In this picture everything, more or less, has its own ambiguous meaning.
The central subject is his self portrait - which he would repeat in many other pictures, very stylized but recognizable: the big nose, the yellowish color and the large face. It seems clear that the alegory´s main character is he himself, and his figure appears surrounded by several objects with mixed meanings. The grasshopper, an animal that caused him terror, filled with ants that signify death. A fish hook as family ties, the lion as sexual desire, stones as his past, a lonely figure as solitude...
Masturbation appears in modernist style with the woman who emerges from his portrait, her face close to the male genitals hidden in close-fitting underpants. Near the woman is an iris which simbolizes purity - a complicated way of defining masturbation as the purest sexual relationship.
Gala appears here again, as frequently occurred, in this case in the embraced couple under the main figure.
In this style of self-portrait, Dalí used large eyelashes to depict his hope of making his dreams come true.