By Cindy Kook, Raphaelle Vulliet Falcon De Longevialle and Laura Theuretzbacher

Not too long ago, the IE Arts & Business Club and its members had the great opportunity to visit the Museo Reina Sofia with a private guided tour. Alumnis and current students walked through the impressive and big exhibition halls led by a very enthusiastic guide which made the visit all the more fun!

The tour was focused on Masterpieces from the early Ángeles Santos, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí.

The aim was to show the artist’s evolutions from their early beginnings to their late years of painting. The guide tried to draw the visitor’s attention to specific details in the paintings. He showed that certain symbols appeared in the older as well as in the latest paintings of the artists; be it in the same or in a transformed way.

It was impressive to see how much the artists changed styles during their careers and why; often it was due to external influences from other artists, politics or war, just to name a few. Therefore, not so popular paintings mostly from the early years, were hard for the visitors to be identified as a Dalí or a Miró. Discovering and learning about this was very interesting and enlightening.

Last but not least, the probably most famous painting of the Museo Reina Sofia was shown to us: Guernica. Besides the history behind it, the guide went much deeper into the development phases of the painting and how often Picasso re-worked and re-painted it. Picasso´s objective was to show war through this painting but without using any symbol that could be associated with war. He wanted to show the pain and cruelty, which happened to Guernica in 1937 through facial expressions and movements so that anybody could understand that the painting is about war without literally seeing war.

We were very happy to see so many students show up for this event and that we were able to distract them from their case studies for a while!