Reina Sofía artworks: Guernica and what to see

Rooms are those shown on the museum's records as of 4 November 2026. The Collections are being rearranged until 2028, so a work may move: check its page on the museum website before you go looking.

Work	Artist	Date	Room
Guernica	Picasso	1937	205.10
Rostro del Gran Masturbador (Face of the Great Masturbator)	Dalí	1929	205.13
Un mundo (A World)	Ángeles Santos	1929	205.06
Tertulia	Ángeles Santos	1929	—
Figura en una ventana (Figure at a Window)	Dalí	1925	205.06
Pintura (La mancha roja) (Painting, The Red Stain)	Miró	1925	206.02
La tertulia del Café de Pombo	Gutiérrez Solana	1920	201.03

What to find in Guernica

It measures 349.3 by 776.6 centimetres, and Picasso painted it in Paris between May and June 1937 for the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exposition. The trigger was the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, which he learned about through photographs in the French press. Even so, the painting doesn't refer to any specific event: it works as a general plea against war.

Look for the symbols the museum points out: the bull, the wounded horse, the bird barely visible at the back on the left, the screaming mother with her dead child, the woman leaning out of a window with a lamp. The colours are limited to whites, blacks and greys, and the wide format recalls press photography and cinema.

The setting counts too. During the Civil War, the room that holds it was used to treat survivors of the Condor Legion's bombings, the same Nazi air force that bombed Guernica.

How it ended up in Madrid

The Spanish state acquired it in 1937. When the Second World War broke out, Picasso placed it in the care of MoMA in New York, and in 1958 he renewed the loan indefinitely, until democratic freedoms were restored in Spain. It returned in 1981.

After Guernica

Stay in the 205 zone. Un mundo is about three metres across, painted in Valladolid by a young and then unknown Ángeles Santos; it made a big impact at the 1929 Salón de Otoño. In Tertulia, by the same artist, notice that the women aren't talking and their eyes never meet. Then compare it with Solana's La tertulia del Café de Pombo, in Room 201.03, which the museum cites as a contrast.

Dalí appears twice: Figura en una ventana, from 1925, before his Surrealist period, and Rostro del Gran Masturbador, from 1929, painted after several days with Gala in Cadaqués.

Before you go, see Reina Sofía tickets and its free hours.