Yesterday, Sunday the 11th, we went to the temporary exhibition of Amedeo Mogdigliani and his times (1884-1920) in the Thyssen Bornemisza in Madrid (until the 18th of May 2008).
The exhibition is actually split in two parts and is shown at two different locations in the center of Madrid, namely:
- Mogdigliani and His Masters at the Thyssen Bornemisza ( Paseo del Prado, 8 )
- Mogdigliani and His Friends at the Fundación Caja Madrid ( Plaza San Martín, 1 )
The exhibition at the Fundación Caja Madrid is free, while the exhibition at the Thyssen costs between 5 and 9 euros, 5 euros for visiting just the Mogdigliani exhibition and 9 euros for visiting the permanent collection as well.
Mogdigliani and His Masters at the Thyssen Bornemisza is very popular and only allows people to enter every 15 minutes to give everybody some room and breathing space. We actually bought the tickets the day before via the internet in entradas.com (note that when buying, entradas.com tells you “error en la comunicacion con el recinto” it really means there aren’t enough tickets available at that time of the day) to assure we wouldnt be queing up for nothing.
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian artist,
practicing both painting and sculpture, who pursued his career for the most part in France. Modigliani was born in Livorno (historically referred to in English as Leghorn), in Northwestern Italy and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906. Influenced by the artists in his circle of friends and associates, by a range of genres and art movements, and by primitive art, Modigliani’s œuvre was nonetheless unique and idiosyncratic. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis— exacerbated by poverty, overworking, and an excessive use of alcohol and narcotics — at the age of 35.
We only saw the exhibition at the Thyssen and were very impressed with the layout and the presentation: the first room is dedicated only to a retrospective of his live and time spend in Paris, while all following rooms have a good amount of explanatory texts in both Spanish and English. It is not a big exhibition but a nice amount of his portraits, female nudes and a few sculptures are shown. All in all we enjoyed it as well as part of the permanent collection we looked at on the 1st floor (Dutch painting and especialy the Impressionists).
After leaving Mogdigliani and the Thyssen, walking down el Paseo del Prado towards Atocha, we stumbled on the new social and cultural center the Caixa Forum in Madrid ( Paseo del Prado, 36 ), a very modern and impressive building were the following two free entrance exhibitions are shown which we´ll try and visit next week:
- Alpohnse Mucha – Seducción, Modernidad y Utopía
- The Bread of angels, Works from the Uffizi
After several tapas we ended the day bumbing into “Atléti” fans at Neptuno celebrating that el Atlético
de Madrid is back in the Champions League after beating Deportiva de la Corñua 1 – 0.
