Spain Guide
Madrid
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Address: Palacio de Villahermosa, at the end of Plaza de las Cortes
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–7pm, closed May 1, Dec 25 & Jan 1; open in recent years until 10pm during July and Aug – check in advance
Price: €6; €9 including temporary exhibitions; Paseo del Arte, combined with Prado and Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, €14.40
Website: www.museothyssen.org
Telephone: 913 690 151
The prestigious site of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, diagonally opposite the Prado in the old Palacio de Villahermosa, played a large part in Spain's acquisition – for a knock-down $350 million in 1993 – of what many argue was the world's greatest private art trove after that of the British royals: seven-hundred-odd paintings accumulated by father-and-son German-Hungarian industrial magnates. The son, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen, died in 2002 aged 81. Another trump card was the late baron's fifth wife, Carmen Cervera (aka "Tita" Cervera), a former Miss Spain, who steered the works to Spain against the efforts of Britain's Prince Charles, the Swiss and German governments, the Getty foundation and other suitors.
No expense was spared on the museum's design, with stucco walls (Carmen insisted on salmon pink) and marble floors. A terribly kitsch portrait of Carmen with a lapdog hangs in the great hall of the museum, alongside those of her husband and King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía. Pass beyond, however, and you are into seriously premier-league art: medieval to eighteenth-century on the second floor, seventeenth-century Dutch and Rococo and Neoclassicism to Fauves and Expressionists on the first floor, and Surrealists, Pop Art and the avant-garde on ground level. Highlights are legion in a collection that displays an almost stamp-collecting mentality in its examples of nearly every major artist and movement: how the Thyssens got hold of classic works by everyone from Duccio and Holbein, through El Greco and Caravaggio, to Schiele and Rothko, takes your breath away.
Carmen's own substantial collection (over 200 works) is housed in the extension, cleverly integrated into the original format of the museum. It is particularly strong on nineteenth-century landscape, North American, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist work. The ground floor is home to a large temporary exhibition space, which stages interesting and highly successful shows.