Mad About Madrid

Google Honour the Birth of Diego Velázquez

The good people of Google have created a Google Doodle out of Velázquez's "Las Meninas" to honour the birth of the great Spanish painter. For those who don't know, the painting can be found in Madrid's Prado Museum.

Autumn Exhibitions in Madrid Museums

There are quite a few good exhibitions going on in Madrid at this time of year. Here is a breakdown of the temporary exhibitions from the Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen Museums and the Juan March Foundation.

Museo de arte Thyssen-Bornemisza

Dürer and Cranach. Art and Humanism in Renaissance Germany

Dates: October 9th, 2007 - January 6th, 2008

Reina Sofía
This museum has a few temporary exhibitions this Autumn, including:

Gustavo Torner - September 11th, 2007 - December 16th, 2007
Paul Rego - September 26th - December 30th, 2007
Andy Goldsworthy - October 3rd, 2007 - January 21st, 2008
Jano - La doble cara de la fotografía. October 10th - December 20th, 2007

Prado Musuem

The 19th century in the Prado including:
Goya and Neo-classicism
History Painting
The end of the century

Dates:  October 31th, 2007 - April 20th, 2008

Fundación Juan March

The Abstraction of Landscape

Dates: October 5th, 2007 - 13th January, 2008

2007 Festival de Otoño

For the 24th year running the Festival de Otoño returns to Madrid. A combination of music, theatre, dance and circus from around the world will entertain visitors and Madrileños for the coming 5 weeks. The event runs from the 15th October to the 18th November and is held is venues across the city.

The Theatre companies who are represented include: Britain's National Theatre, La Comédie-Française, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Josep Maria Mestres.

Dance companies attending include: Les Ballets C. de la B., Compañía Blanca Li, Toneelhuis. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Compañía Carlotta Sagna.

On the music front Caetano Veloso, Companyia Carles Santos, David Sylvian, Philip Glass and Compagnia dell' Ambra will all be performing.

For more information, visit the Festival de Otoño website.

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Madrid's Galleries Open at Night

As a forerunner to next week's 'Noche en Blanco' (White Night), Madrid's art galleries will be opening their doors tomorrow night until midnight. An initiative of Arte Madrid over 40 galleries will participate. For more details download their pdf document. More details on Noche en Blanco will follow this week. In the meantime you may want to check out Damian Corrigan's Noche en Blanco page on About.com.

Veranos de la Villa - Madrid's Summer Festival

I must apologise to regular visitors to this blog for not having written an article for a while but I have been quite busy with work and developing my other website - Marketing Tom. Because of that I failed to write up about one of the big events in Madrid's calendar, the Veranos de la Villa festival. This festival runs from the 2nd July until the 26th August and offers visitors and Madrileños the ability to see around 100 shows covering music, theatre, dance, circus events and zarzuela in some of the most important venues around the city. The Sabatini gardens (next to Palacio Real), Conde Duque, Plaza Mayor, Centro Cultural de la Villa and Teatro Español are just some of those locations.

Here's a brief selection of singers who will perform - Liza Minelli, Laurie Anderson, Carlos Núñez, Andy & Lucas, David de María, Antonio Vega, Patricia Kraus and Mercedes Ferrer, Diego el Cigala, Yossou N’ Dour. Flamenco artists include: José Mercé, Carmen Linares, José Menese, Rafaela Carrasco, Manuel Molina, La Negra and Esperanza Fernández. The Patio Conde Duque will host the Boston Ballet and the Legend Lin Dance Theatre and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess is performed by the New York Harlem Theatre.

Classsic Spanish plays like Calderón de la Barca's Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar and Shakespeare's Cymbelline will be performed in the Jardines de Galileo.

All in all, there's something for everyone.

For more (much more) information, take a look at the Veranos de la Villa microsite from EsMadrid.

Palacio de Linares to Remain Open Until October

One of Madrid's most emblematic palaces, the Palacio de Linares, will keep its doors open until October. The Palace, which can be found on one corner of the Plaza de Cibeles,  dates from the 19th Century and is well-known for its beautiful architecture and exquisite interior. It also has an interesting history and is said to even have its own ghosts. The story of the palace and its owners is actually very sad. The palace was built by the Marqués de Linares for both himself and his wife. His father had educated him to choose a wife without consideration of her financial or social class. This he did and he married the tobacconist's daughter. What he didn't know was that his father had had a relationship with the mother and his wife was the result!  He only found out when his dying father, God bless him!, sent him a letter to inform him of the situation.

The Pope at the time, Leo XIII had to issue a papal bull which allowed them to live together but in chastity. In order to forget the shame the Marqués threw all his energy into the building of his palace, where budgets and time had no constraints. The Marqués and his wife told the architect that they would like the Palace to be split in two, with him taking the ground floor and the wife the upper floor. What is interesting is that they didn't have a kitchen, but instead relied on food being delivered from Lhardy, a Madrid restaurant which still operates today!

Opening Times
Saturdays: 11am to 1pm
Sundays: 11am to 1pm
Mondays: 3pm to 5pm

Cost
6 Euros for Adults; 2 Euros for Retired people; students 3 Euros and Under 12's Free.

Website
Casa de América

Related Links
Photos on 20Minutos Website
Walk the Paseo del Prado and Paseo de Recoletos

Van Gogh Exhibition Opens in Madrid

From tomorrow, 12th June 2007, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Musuem will be exhibiting paintings created by Vincent Van Gogh in the last 3 months of his life at Auvers-sur-Oise, France. He painted a total of 72 paintings in 70 days and even painted until the last day of his life! This exhibition brings together 30 works of art - 27 paintings and 3 drawings and will run until the 16th September, 2007.

If you'd like to know more about Vincent Van Gogh's life, and final few months, go look where everyone else looks: Wikipedia.

Exhibition of Spanish Postwar Publicity and Propaganda

If you're interested in Spanish 'Modern' history, you may want to head over to the Círculo de Bellas Artes for its latest exhibition: Post War: Propaganda and Publicity. On show are over 200 posters and other memorabilia which show the close connection of the Franco regime with business. The exhibition runs until the 20th May.

New Prado Extension Unveiled

Having spent 152 million Euros on developing the new extension to the Prado Museum, yesterday the new "wing" of the Prado was opened by the Spanish culture minister Carmen Calvo. Designed by the architect Rafael Moneo, it adds an extra 22,000 square metres to the great museum. One of the main focal points will be the cloister of Los Jerónimos church (found next door) which was dismantled, and re-assembled, piece-by-piece.

The extension is open to the public from the 28th April, 2007. The picture above is from an album of Gorka Lejarcegi and found on El Pais's website. As yet, you will find nothing on the absolutely crappy and pitiful Prado Museum website - though you may in time! Having spent this much money, it doesn't even make it their news section.

The clip below is from 20 Minutos:

Madrid's Easter Programme 2007

If you're off to Madrid for Easter, you may want to take a look at the range of processions and concerts that the city council has put on for its citizens. The following link takes you to the EsMadrid site where you can get more information.