During my visit to Madrid (which was my first time in Spain) and in between a visit to the Bernabeu football stadium - home to Real Madrid 'the best football team in the world'- getting lost a couple of times, viewing the outside of the Palace, bull ring, opera etc, accepting the prostitutes outside my hotel plying for trade as an ordinary thing and having a good scoop of red wine and meat products, I took the opportunity to explore some of what the Madrid art scene has to offer:
1. Reine Sofia - A large gallery of modern art, its most famous piece is Picasso's Guernica.
2. Palacio de Cibeles - The highlight was the view of the city from the top of the main tower of this landmark wedding cake style building. It houses the CentroCentro cultural centre. There were a number of exhibitions on and I saw a photo journalism exhibition which covered topics such as homelessness in Madrid, the refugee crisis and the dead and missing of Peru's civil war.
3. Caixa Forum - a contemporary art space housed in an impressive Herzog & de Meuron designed building which features a vertical garden wall. I wasn't too fussy about seeing the Miro exhibition but I enjoyed seeing the building and took the opportunity to use the toilet there.
4. Centro de Exposiciones Arte Canal - outside the city centre, on the Plaza de Castilla is a reservoir (I suspect it is no longer in use). The upper part has been turned into a contemporary public park and garden and below is an art space which on my visit had an exhibition dedicated to Cleopatra. It contained many Egyptian objects but also explored the image and influence of the great Queen. I was interested to see a collection of numerous depictions of her death by a Cobra which was prefaced by a jar on a stand with a preserved dead cobra within. The main highlight perhaps were a number of costumes worn by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film and tunics worn by Rex Harrison and Richard Burton.
5. Crystal Palace - housed in the splendid Retiro Park (where it was warm enough for me to sit outside in the sun with a cold beer) is this stunning glasshouse built in 1887. On my visit was an installation "Reward Your Grace" by Danh Vo (described on Wikipedia as a Vietnamese born Danish performance art inspired conceptual artist). The piece was bones hanging from the ceiling.
6. Velazquez Palace - A short distance from the Crystal Palace is this 1883 exhibition hall. Another great space which in this instance was showing a retrospective of Andrzej Wroblewski (1927 - 1957) a Polish artist whose work was influenced by the significant movements in contemporary art at that time but also by the horrific injustices in his country during the war.
7. Conde Duque - An imposing (and as a result, not entirely welcoming) former military barracks which was transformed into a cultural centre in 1983. I was becoming quite tired on my trip by now and not entirely in the mood to traipse around this massive structure to find where the art was hidden but I did locate a room featuring drawings by the Spanish avant-garde writer Ramon Gomez de la Serna and another with photography from Joan Fontcuberta a conceptual artist from Barcelona. The gallery was dark and the photographs were in light boxes (like slides lit from behind). I've checked the gallery website and translated the text about the images which says "a unique and sensory experience where the viewer will discover, through sixty light boxes, images that are hidden behind each image". Well, now I feel I've missed out on something as I didn't see any hidden images.
8. The Royal Chapel of St Anthony of La Florida - the final resting place of the great Spanish artist Goya (well, after they'd dug him up in France, minus his skull, and reinterred him here) is a national monument which is painted by Goya himself with marvellous fescoes.
And no, before you ask, I didn't visit the Prado!
