Conoce el más desconocido de los grandes museos de Madrid

When it comes to museums, it’s not all about the Prado or the Reina Sofía. A few yards from Puerta del Sol and four metro stops from our charming hotel in Madrid is the second most important museum in the Spanish capital: the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando), a title which it deserves due to the historical and artistic value of its works, coming second to the Prado Museum. Works by great artists such as Picasso and Dalí have “decorated” its walls and it exhibits a fantastic collection of Goya paintings that cannot be missed, with 13 paintings that include The Burial of the Sardine.

As well as its valuable permanent collection, the museum organises interesting exhibitions, such as The Legacy of Al-Andalus. Arabic antiques in the Academy drawings, which can be visited until December 8th. The institution turns to itself to rescue documents related to Arabic culture that belong to two great projects that were set up to preserve the country’s cultural legacy. And so, when there was news that the paintings hanging in the Alhambra were deteriorating back in the 18th century, the Academy set itself in motion to avoid this artistic loss, ordering the exact copy of those paintings to a local artist, Diego Sánchez Sarabia. From there, they moved onto the documents and the study of the monuments, whose drawings are shown today as a sample of national interest in its preservation and in beauty that they hold.

The other exhibition that you can visit until November 8th is called Tadeusz Peiper. Herald of the avant-garde between Spain and Poland, which is exhibited in the National Chalcography area. Focused on the artistic figure of Peiper (b. Poland, 1891-1969), the exhibition explores the avant-garde universe from the early 20th century in Central Europe, where artists like Peiper embraced this art as a radical way of life. Like his contemporaries Jean Cocteau, André Breton or Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Peiper was a poet who had strong ties to visual arts, whose influence definitely made an impression to artists of the time.

These are just two excuses to discover this “monument” to art in Madrid, a museum that sometimes goes unnoticed by tourists and locals alike. Adult tickets cost 6 euros, while children can go in for half price at just 3 euros.

Foto: Raystorm via Wikimedia Commons. Licencia CC 3.0

Categories: Madrid Cultura