The Madrid Museum Crawl
Today I'm going to take you on a visit to two of Spain's wonderful museums. The Prado is probably one of Europe's best. And among all the wonderful art we saw there, the pieces that I can't get out of my mind are ones done by the Spanish painter Goya. The transition in his work is amazing...from dutiful painter of Spanish aristocracy to rebel (he painted one of the few nudes of the time and was called before the Inquisition to expain himself) to his later 'black paintings'. What kind of a bitter and disillusioned mind would it take to create the likes of 'Saturn Devouring His Son' and 'Old Men Eating Soup'? Note: these photos are taken from the museums' websites: we weren't allowed to use flash photography in either museum we visited.
Next it's off to the Reina Sofia museum, with its works of Dali, El Greco, more Goya, and Spain's national piece of art, Picasso's Guernica. This painting is particularly poignant in light of what's going on right now in the Middle East.
The inspiration for this painting came after Picasso heard about a horrible incident that happened in April of 1937 in the tiny village of Guernica in northern Spain. Franco agreed to let Hitler use the hamlet for bombing practice. It was pounded with bombs for three days and at the end of that time 1,600 people were dead or wounded. The painting was put on display at the World Fair held in Paris that year, the Spanish pavillion located in the shadow of the German one.
6:18:13 AM 
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