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The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum at the Villahermos Palace together with the Prado Museum and the Queen Sofia Art Center belongs to the so-called Art Triangle. It presents paintings from the collection of Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his son Hans Heinrich. The Thyssen-Bornemisza’s collection shines particularly bright in the areas which are underrepresented in other Spanish museums. Paintings from the Trecento (Italian 14th century), like Christ and the Samaritan Woman by Duccio di Buoninsegna, and works by Early Netherlandish artists like The Annunciation Diptych grisaille by Jan Van Eyck are the museum’s finest examples of late medieval art. The museum also houses an exquisite collection of 15th century portraits, including one of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Ghirlandaio and one of Young Knight in a Landscape by Carpaccio. Works by Dürer, Caravaggio, Rubens, Frans Hals and Canaletto help us trace the trajectory of European art between the 16th and 18th centuries.
A visit to the museum offers a wonderful opportunity to study both landscape and genre art, two types of paintings that were particularly popular in the Dutch school of the 17th century and amongst 19th-century American artists. These paintings also inspired Romantic painters, such as Friedrich, Impressionists like Monet and Degas, and Post-Impressionists, like Gauguin and Van Gogh, all of whom are represented in the museum’s collection.
It also boasts important 20th century avant-garde works: fauvism, expressionism, surrealism, abstraction and pop art. Harlequin with a Mirror by Picasso, Picture with Three Spots, No. 196 by Kandinsky, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking by Dali, The Cock by Chagall, Hotel Room by Hopper and Woman in Bath by Lichtenstein are some of them.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza collection is spread around the second floor, where the Old Masters until the start of the 19th century are found, and the first floor is devoted to the work of the Modern Masters from impressionism to the 20th century.
The ground floor of the museum, with its own entrance at the start of the main hall, houses the new installation of 180 works from the Carmen Thyssen collection.
Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza began collecting art works in the 1920s. Taking advantage of the period of the great crisis in the United States, he bought paintings for quite low prices. Due to financial problems, their owners agreed to even the most adverse sales conditions.
