The Reina Sofia National Art Center Museum will host ten exhibitions in 2023, highlighting diverse directions in contemporary art from around the globe. The program reflects a broad spectrum of styles and voices, featuring marks from Picasso on the centenary of his birth, alongside works by Ben Shahn and Alberto Greco.
Within the Sabatini Building, a retrospective dedicated to Ben Shahn opens on October 3. The show surveys the artist’s career, establishing him as a pivotal figure in American realism. An accompanying anthology by Basque creator Ibon Aranberri will be presented on October 17, expanding the dialogue across regions and generations.
In tribute to Pablo Picasso, the museum stages Picasso 1906. The Great Transformation beginning November 14. This project explores the artist’s role in shaping modern art and its ongoing influence on contemporary practice, inviting visitors to trace the moments when Picasso redirected artistic possibility toward new directions.
The program includes a long-running exhibition titled Intrigues which opens May 30 and brings together fifty artists from the Mediterranean basin and the African continent. The presentation invites audiences to explore a wide range of perspectives and to consider how regional dialogues shape modern artistic inquiry. A concurrent spotlight on Alberto Greco, with the show Viva el arte vivo opening June 20, centers on the artist’s relentless energy and enduring relevance in contemporary art discourse.
The Reina Sofia also presents a landmark exhibition on a legendary avant-garde publisher, Call It Another Way Something Else Press, Inc. from 1963 to 1974, opening September 26. A retrospective dedicated to German video artist Angela Melitopoulos runs through mid-June, and for the first time, the works of André du Colombier are featured in the museum from May 16 onward.
Two installations will fill Crystal Palace in Retiro Park, offering large-scale works that engage visitors with social and environmental themes. Abraham Manama presents a piece using jute sacks to reflect the vulnerabilities and injustices of global trade, while Ulla von Brandenburg unveils a new set design that uses curtains, folds, and stairways to contemplate how people inhabit their surroundings.
Throughout 2023, the museum will present a film and video program along with comprehensive retrospectives of historic filmmakers such as Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci-Lucchi. In collaboration with Filmoteca, a full retrospective of Peter Watkins will be shown, complemented by cycles of lectures on topics like Filming the Posthuman and the Bestiary, and the relationship between cinema and the monstrous. An accompanying series of Picasso-focused conferences will be organized toward the year’s end, enriching the dialogue between historical and contemporary perspectives on art and cinema.