Reina Sofia Museum

The central building of the Reina Sofia museum used to be the San Carlos hospital, founded in the sixteenth century. In the eighteen century Carlos the Third decided to found another hospital, and his best architects commenced a major redesign. After this redesign further additions and modifications were made until the hospital was shut down in 1965. Renovation works began only in the beginning of the 1980s, and in 1990 The Reina Sofia Museum finally opened its doors.

Now it is one of the greatest and most modern galleries in the world. The collection of the Reina Sofia museum consists of over 20 000 artworks, including about 4000 paintings, mostly of Spanish artists of the 20th century such as Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Miro, Dali and Julio Gonzalez.

Pablo Picasso’s famous painting "Guernica" (1937) was given to the Reina Sofia museum in 1992 as well as the collection of 20th century art from the Prado museum.

Guernica, a Basque town, which was destroyed in the Civil war, impressed Picasso so much that he painted this large 3.5 meters by 7.8 meters black and white painting. Picasso never went to Guernica but he wanted to show what the war really is: pain, death, suffering and helplessness. It is an accusation against the war and the General Franco regime.

There are only a few foreign artists in the Reina Sofia museum such as Robert Delaunay, Yves Tanguy, Jacques Lipchitz, Yves Klein and Francis Bacon.