Art is everywhere in Madrid and quite few of the exhibitions we have stumbled on have been sponsored by the government and the admission is free. And of course there are monuments and sculptures in every plaza. Yesterday we were headed down to the Reina Sofía, Madrid’s modern art museum, and we found five or six commercial, contemporary galleries on the way.
The Reina Sofía had organized a show called “Arte en un Mundo Dividido 1945~1968” with work from their collection and in conjunction, they had a retrospective of the American painter, Leon Golub. We were excited about that but it turned out the Golub show was in a satellite site in the Parque Retiro behind the Prado. So we followed our eyes through the maze of Picassos, Richard Serras and Antonio Tápies, a Spanish painter that we liked quite a bit and headed over to the park. Golub’s scruffy tactile work holds its own with “Guérnica” from the Reina and Goya’s “The Third of May 1808” at the Prado!
Heading up Jerónimo toward the Puerta del Sol we found a heavy police presence surrounding a large crowd of Los Indignados outside a government office building. Their “15 Mayo” movement is almost a month old now and still strong. We watched for a bit while a police helicopter hovered overhead and I was still thinking about Golub’s pantings.
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