El Museo Reina Sofia

Wednesday morning we went on a tour of el Museo Reina Sophía a giant hospital turned museum. Paula, a teacher from the language school, gave us a great tour. With our guide in baggy pants and stylish sunglasses it was far from the typical museum curator lead tour experience. By the end of the tour we all wished that Paula were not only our usual teacher but our friend too. The tour had the perfect mix of art terms, history, symbolism and gossip on the painters.

The first thing we saw was Guernica, Picasso’s most famous painting inspired by the Bombing of a Basque town called Guernica during the Spanish Civil War by some Germans who were helping Franco out. Commissioned by the Spanish Republican government in 1937, Picasso agreed to paint the war-protest on the condition that it not return to Spain until democracy was reestablished. So before it returned to Spain in1981 it was in lots of exhibitions and hung in the MOMA for a while. At one of the exhibitions a Nazi walked up to Picasso and asked if he was the one who had painted it, and Picasso answered: “No, you did”.

It’s a huge painting and takes up an entire wall by itself. Paula explained that the bull is a symbol of Spain, the light at the top is a symbol of hope, and the severed hand holding a flower and a knife represents the potential for peace or something like that. We saw some of Picasso’s other paintings too like the Woman in Blue, and a bunch of paintings that looked like a three year old could have done.

Next, we saw paintings by Joan Miró. As Paula described Miró’s technique, I couldn’t help but think that Miró and Saint Ignatius are a lot alike. They were both Spanish. Miró used to sit and stare at an object for days without eating, drinking or moving until he could see the true essence of his subject. And I read in his Spiritual Excersises that Saint Ignatius sat and prayed for days without eating, drinking or moving until he had some divine inspiration. I think overall the method worked out better for Saint Ignatius. He founded the Jesuits, while Miró made paintings that look nothing like what their titles describe.

Man Smoking a Pipe?

We also saw some works by Dalí. Paula explained that some people think he went crazy because he was named after his brother who had died. So, everyday his mother used to take him to pray over a grave with his own name on it. Paula said a lot his paintings were inspired by bad dreams and there was a lot of symbolism in them. I think he was my favorite of the three because his paintings looked like they took more skill than the finger painting style stuff by the other two.

Another exhibit we saw was of photographs from the Spanish Civil War. I don’t know much about the war but when my friend asked I told her what I knew: the Spanish Civil war happened back when the black slaves in the south of Spain wanted freedom, and the nice people in the north of Spain wanted them to be free to, but the southern plantation owners didn’t want to free the slaves, because they needed them to pick the cotton, and so there was a war. My explanation was good enough for my friend, who, feeling completely enlightened, exclaimed “Oh! So it’s like the Civil War but of Spain!”

To make the visit even better, on the way out of the Museum we ran into two Italian guys who we had met the night before and broke off from the rest of the BC group to get some lunch with them. They convinced us to come to Italy. So, Spanish art this week, Italian art next week!