Exhibition. The Biographies of Amos Gitai

Amos Gitai. Photographies of the set for the film Esther. 1984-1985

The biographies of Amos Gitai can be considered a case study within the investigation proposed by the exhibition
Biographical forms. Construction and individual mythology. Amos Gitai, born in Haifa in 1950, has made over 40 fiction films and documentaries in which he explores the history and the conflicts of the Near East through concepts such as home, exile, social control and utopia. Winner of the Critics’ Award at the 1989 Venice Film Festival, his work has been the object of various retrospectives, at venues as important as the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2003) and New York’s Lincoln Center (2005).

The exhibition is what the curator has called an intellectual biography, in which fragments of his films are used to analyse how Amos Gitai has interpreted his family history in his works: the architecture of his father, Munio Weinraub, and the experiences described by his mother, Efratia Margalit.

Date: February 5 - May 19, 2014
Location: Sabatini Building, Floor 3
Curatorship: Jean-François Chevrier
Organization: Museo Reina Sofía

Related activities. Film Series Biography, history, territories. Nine films by Amos Gitai

In dialogue with the exhibition, this film series, which opens with a talk by the filmmaker, covers thirty years of activity, beginning with Architecture (1978) and ending with Carmel (2009). In between, the program reviews the geography of the Arab-Israeli conflict, examining a present that is both a time period and a historical stratum.

The relationship between construction and violence in a country where territorial conflicts are accompanied by acts of construction and destruction is key to the work of Amos Gitai, an architect-filmmaker-and also a biographer-filmmaker. In his films, the story, with its biographical content, encompasses and overcomes the distinction between documentary and fiction.

Date: February 5 - 26, 2014
Program: check the webpage
Location: Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Hour: 7:00 p.m.
Entry: Free admission, but space is limited
Organization: Museo Reina Sofía

Exhibition. Wols: Cosmos and Street

Wols. Composition, 1941-1942. Pen, colored ink on paper. 20 x 12,8 cm. The Menil Collection, Houston. Photography: Paul Hestern

One century after the birth of Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, 1913, Berlin - 1951, Paris) the originality and brilliance of his singular contribution to 20th century art is yet to be fully recognized. This exhibition focuses on his photographs taken shortly before World War II, from approximately 1932 to 1938, and also his “abstract” drawings, etchings and watercolours. The latter were produced during the war and the post-war period, while Wols, then in France, lived a precarious life, continuously displaced from one home to another and from one internment camp to another.

"The Street" represents ordinary life, worldly matters, practical details of human existence, as revealed by Wols’ photographs, while "Cosmos" is a synonym for his exquisite drawings, the creation of a vision of universal energy expressed in fluid constructions of biological and organic forms. The two spheres are not mutually exclusive, nor as distant from one another as they might seem. Wols’ vision of daily life has a hallucinatory quality that verges on surrealism, and his cosmos materialises through the movements of his hand and the energies it contains.

Date: February 13 - May 26, 2014
Location: Sabatini Building, Floor 3
Curatorship: Guy Brett
Organization: Museo Reina Sofía

Film Series and Master Class with the Filmmaker. After the Shipwreck. The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki (1983-1996)

Aki Kaurismäki. Dogs have no hell. Film, 2002

Organised into eight sessions and a master class by Aki Kaurismäki (Orimattila, Finland, 1957), this retrospective is held in connection with the research conducted by Museo Reina Sofía into the 1980s and 90s as the origins of the contemporary. With a filmography characterized by literary references and also by allusions to cinematographic modernity, and drawing from both realism and the theatrical, Kaurismäki presents a cinema based on utopia within tragedy. 

The series is complemented by a carte blanche program developed by the filmmaker himself, while each one of the sessions seeks to establish a dialogue between a feature film and a short from his early work, many of which have been recovered, subtitled and premiered in cinema for the first time.

Date: February 21 - March 22, 2014
Program: Check the web page
Location: Sabatini Building Auditorium (except for Masterclass February 21 at Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400)
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Entry: Tickets required. Tickets may be picked up free of charge at the Sabatini Building ticket window starting two days before each session. Capacity: 140 seats
Curatorship: Loic Díaz-Ronda
Organization: Museo Reina Sofía
Within the framework of: ARCOmadrid 2014

Travelling Exhibitions. Richard Hamilton at the Tate Modern

Richard Hamilton. My Marilyn. 1965. Oil, collage and photograph on panel. 102.5 x 122 cm. Collection Ludwig, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen

Organised by Museo Reina Sofía, this major retrospective on Richard Hamilton (London, 1922-2011), one of the pioneers of Pop Art, constitutes the most complete show of all those held to date. It brings together over 250 works produced between 1949 and 2010, which reveal the artist’s interest in mass culture and graphic design expressed in a wide range of media, including painting, photography, installation, drawing, etching and even works created through his experimentation with computer-generated images and through collaborations with other artists.

A smaller version of this exhibition opens on February 13th at the Tate Modern in London, and as of June 25th the entire anthology can be seen at Museo Reina Sofía.

Date: February 13 - May 26, 2014
Location: Tate Modern, London
Curatorship: Vicente Todolí and Paul Schimmel
Organization: Museo Reina Sofía

3rd Annual Conference of European and Latin American Museums

The objective of this conference is to analyse the changing relationship between private collections and museums, with a view to proposing new models and alliances that encourage the conjunction of ethical and artistic criteria in the configuration and functioning of collections. The collection concept is undergoing a series of transformations that show the pertinence of terms such as common heritage, memory and shared heritage being revised in the framework of global collaboration between museums and private collectors.

Conference participants will work on these issues in two work sessions held behind closed doors. Their conclusions will be presented in a results session to take place on the 19th and two public conversations that will take place on the 20th at ARCOmadrid. As part of the program Ticio Escobar will offer a public lecture entitled The contemporary museum: Alternatives.

Date: February 18 - 20, 2014
Program and participants: Check the web page
Location: Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400. Museo Reina Sofía and ARCOmadrid, Forum Auditorium, Hall 9
Curatorship: Museo Reina Sofía
Organization: ARCOmadrid 2014