October 29th – Another day of firsts

Today was one of firsts for us.  We got out early and took the metro over to the Fundacion Juan March and attended our first musical concert.  The fundacion (foundation) offers free concerts on Sunday and Mondays at noon so we went to a piano and violin presentation.  They had music of Handel, Beethoven, and Franck and it turned out to be quite enjoyable.  The performers are quite accomplished musicians, the violinist has performed with the London Philharmonic, the Amsterdam symphony and a number of well recognized conductors as a featured concert soloist. The pianist was less well known but equally professional.  We are hoping to be able to go to a few more during our time here.  After the concert we took a bus down south close to Atocha station to go to the Reina Sofia.  This is our first visit to this museum as well it focuses on modern art from the post impressionists up to the present.  Many Miros, Dalis, and Picassos as well as other Spanish artists are featured, and that was in the first 3 rooms that we visited.  One of the metronomes created by Man Ray was out in the hall.  I got crossways with the docents twice in the first couple rooms, the first was that I sat on the floor to read a handout and the guard told me to get up.  Next I asked the other guard if I could take pictures and she said, ‘yes but without flash’ so you know what happened next, I turned off the flash but then reset the picture mode to an indoor setting and the camera reset the flash setting without me knowing it so when I took the picture, it flashed!  The guard came over and EMPHASIZED that flash was not allowed.  I was meekly trying to say it turned itself back on and looking for somewhere to hide, so now I have two Spanish women I’m afraid of, DOH!  What was one of the most interesting things to me was how closely the art of the many Spanish artists of the 20’s and 30’s was to the art being created in Denver, Taos, and Santa Fe in the same period of time.  There was a definite movement to paint scenes and images from the specific regions, i.e. regionalism. It has been implied sometimes that this was a uniquely American phenomenon but clearly this is not true.  

Spanish regionalism of the 30´s

Anyway after 4 rooms we noticed that we were nearing the time of another announced work slowdown by the bus and metro drivers so we hustled up to our bus stop and caught one of the last busses before the slowdown began, so that we could get to our Spanish class in the evening.  Oh and we had our first, but not last, visit to a Thai restaurant close to Reina Sofia.