MADRID.- The Museo Reina Sofía has enhanced its Collections in 2025 with a total of 404 fresh acquisitions of works by Spanish artists such as Maruja Mallo, Soledad Sevilla, Juan Genovés, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Delhy Tejero, Isaac Díaz Pardo, Esther Boix, Salvador Dalí, Joan Fontcuberta, Victoria Civera, Darío Villalba, Manuela Ballester, Pablo Gargallo and Ángela de la Cruz and international artists that include Judy Chicago, Giuseppe Campuzano, Marta Minujín and emerging Palestine artist Lara Salous, to mention but a few.

These additions continue of the policy of strengthening the representation of women artists, meaning that 58.6% of the money invested by Spain’s Ministry of Culture and the Museo is concentrated on acquiring artworks created by women.

Thus, the Museo Reina Sofía Collections are essentially growing in three ways: purchases from the Museo Reina Sofía’s financial resources and artworks donated to the Museo, acquisitions via the financial resources of Spain’s Ministry of Culture, including purchases at the ARCO art fair and auctions approved by Spain’s Historical Heritage Assets Classification, Valuation and Export Board, and loaned artworks by the Museo Reina Sofía Foundation, both with acquisitions and donations.

Via these three channels the stress has been placed on the new unveiling of the Museo Reina Sofía Collections, the first phase of which will take place in the first quarter of 2026 when the fourth floor of the Sabatini Building will be opened. This space, devoted to artistic creation — chiefly Spanish — stretching from the Transition to democracy to the present day, has incorporated the work of male and female artists working in the very recent present, for instance those born in the 1990s, 1980s and 1970s.

Efforts have also been made to incorporate the work of artists who are yet to be represented or who are underrepresented at different stages of their career.
These efforts also include the addition of works which can engage in dialogue with other pieces already present in the Museo, be it generationally, artistically or thematically. In this regard, the Reina has endeavoured to cultivate the narrative threads already followed, for instance shining a light on the work of artists fighting for gender, racial or cultural equality, expanding the possibilities of representation of the Collections across the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Museo Reina Sofía director, Manuel Segade, has stressed how “the Reina Collection continues to grow at a good pace through the key support of the Ministry of Culture, as well as civil society, artists’ heirs and collectors whose donations continue to contribute to the betterment of our holdings. A true Christmas gift is being able to still appreciate, over the coming months, the Maruja Mallo show and her Verbena de Pascua (Easter Fair), which finally returns home after a long exile”.

Museo Reina Sofía

Within these fresh additions, the Museo has acquired 81 works by 36 artists, totalling 2.4 million euros. These acquisitions largely come from an extraordinary contribution by Spain’s Ministry of Culture, valued at 2,206,389.11 euros allocated to the Reina.
Two of the Reina’s major acquisitions are works by Maruja Mallo, attained with the essential support of the Ministry of Culture. Perfil de joven [Joven negra] (Profile of a Young [Black] Girl) is a key piece in her series on humanity understood as a female gender, yet undoubtedly the most significant purchase of the year was the 1927 work Verbena de Pascua (Easter Fair), the incorporation of which is patently a unique opportunity for Spanish heritage given that the artist sold the work during her exile in Argentina, with this integration into national collections denoting the repatriation of an exiled asset, in memory of the artist’s benefactors Norberto Mario (Nuchim Manasze) Blumencwejg and Norma Moya de Blumencwejg.

Added within the same context as the Generation of ‘27 are three works by Delhy Tejero: Autorretrato (Self-portrait) and María Dolores, one of the artist’s most arresting portraits, and her drawing Amanecer o anochecer (Dawn or Dusk), part of her mature period. Along with the two loaned paintings and two drawings loaned by the artist, a work that is practically absent from the market has also been obtained. Moreover, the holdings of other female artists linked to the second wave of feminism in the 1960s also join the Collections, for instance pieces by Esther Boix, Carmen Pagés, Amèlia Riera and US artist Judy Chicago.

Another major incorporation is one of the early architectural pieces, Proyecto de uso de La Chantría (Intended-use Project for La Chantría, 1990), by Isidoro Valcárcel, a key artist in the history of Spanish conceptual art who, furthermore, has donated three of his works, opening a panoramic view of the decades-long work of an artist with very restrictive access to the market.

Other additions include a unique work by Isaac Díaz Pardo, a key figure in twentieth-century Galician culture; A barca de Caronte condenses many of the aesthetic and ethical concerns running through his oeuvre, in addition to referencing one of the Museo’s research strands: exile. Included within this landscape of post-war Galician artists are works by Manuel Colmeiro and Urbano Lugrís.

Two works have been purchased from the era of Spain’s Second Republic, showing the figure of an athletic, powerful woman that began to be represented in the 1930s: Rafael Pellicer’s painting La arquera (The Archer) and the poster Las Arenas. Balneario. Piscina luminosa. Valencia (Las Arenas. Spa. Glistening Pool. Valencia) by Josep Renau.

From the development of modernity during Francoism is the incorporation of a collaboration between two artists: Ángel Ferrant, a central figure from Spanish avant-garde sculpture, and architect Luis Felipe Vivanco, both of whom worked on an innovative religious temple that shows how modernity opened a path between different architectures, such as religious architecture, during the dictatorship.
Among the photographic acquisitions are Joan Fontcuberta’s complete series Herbarium, a key piece in the critique of representation that was prevalent in the 1980s, and a selection of Documentos básicos (Basic Documents) by Darío Villalba. In the same support Maider López’s Playa (Beach) expands the holdings of Spanish relational art.

Within sculpture is the incorporation of Pablo Gargallo’s L'Aragonais ou Jeune homme à la marguerite (1927), widely believed to reproduce the physiognomy of Pablo Picasso and made in a familiar material to the artist, terracotta. Efforts have been focused on adding sculptures made from the 1970s to the present day, for instance with works by Salomé Cuesta, Joan Rom and Juan Bordes, while an objectual work, hitherto underrepresented, by Victoria Civera has been acquired. Further additions include a Jon Mikel Euba video installation that also assimilates sculpture, unprecedented in the work by this artist until this point, and the installation El sabor del recuerdo (The Taste of Memory) by Begoña Montalbán. Guillermo Pérez Villalta’s materialisation of his incursions into furniture design with the stool Sfinx or Sphinx also becomes part of the Collections, in addition to an original Teapot-Aquarium Partition he made in collaboration with Rafael Pérez-Mínguez, whose works only included a painting until now. Now part of the Reina Sofía Collections are two original Eroticonas by Amèlia Riera, a relevant artist in the Catalan artistic landscape of the second half of the twentieth century and hitherto unrepresented.

Further incorporations of holdings of works by Latin American artists continue with pieces by Giuseppe Campuzano (Peru), Juan Pablo Echeverri (Colombia) and Luz Lizarazo (Colombia).

As a national public institution, the Museo Reina Sofía has the chance to bid at auctions for significant opportunities, and by such means has required a folding screen Salvador Dalí made aged nineteen, at the request of his sister, with its echoes of Asia; a portrait by José de Togores, the kind of artist that was non-existent in the Collections before now; a still-life by Celso Lagar, in an example of Planismo, one of the few -isms of the Spanish-speaking avant-garde; three pieces by Alexandre de Riquer from Catalan Modernism; and the work Indolencia (Indolence) from 1920 by another Catalan artist, Ramón Jou Senabré.

Museo Reina Sofía: Donations

The number of donations received totals 249 works by 42 artists, and with a value that rises to 3.065 million euros. Juan Genovés is represented with six new works donated by the Genovés family and by the family company Trabajo ETRA, pioneering creations from the series through which he would create his subsequent work, among them Multitudes, joining El abrazo (The Embrace) as icons of visual output during the Transition to democracy in Spain. Donated works from Soledad Sevilla and her most recent series also join the Collections — a series completing the homages to Eusebio Sempere that concluded her retrospective in the Reina. For his part, Juan Uslé has donated three pieces from his first period in New York, significant works at Documenta in 1992.

Within the set of collective donations is a family donation of an archive that forms the bulk of work by artist and performer Miguel Benlloch, from Granada, acquisitions which now make the Museo the institution with the greatest representation of his work; 40 works by José Luis Tirado, stretching from the 1970s to the present day, constituting an opportunity to enrich the Museo’s collection of graphic, photographic and performing art via a pivotal artist in Spanish counterculture; 29 items of jewellery designed by Chus Burés, along with photographs by Alberto García Alix and Cees Van Gelderen which made a key work in the plastic art of the Movida movement iconic; and nineteen works from the Baez-Tavárez Collection with pieces by Ernest Lothar, George Hausdorf, Joan Junyer Pascual-Fibla and José Vela Zanetti, all representatives of the impact of Spanish artists exiled during the Spanish Civil War and European artists displaced during the Second World War to Argentina. In addition, the Archive of Ignacio Gómez de Liaño is completed with fourteen new incorporations of experimental visual poetry.

The intention has been to retrieve the work of women artists such as ceramicist Mercedes Amat with two murals made conjointly with her husband, Jacint Bofarull, in 1965 and 1966, and donated by the family. And the work of painter María Roësset, from the early twentieth century, of which Harold G. Jones donates a sixth work, Pastor calentándose las manos al fuego (Shepherd Warming His Hands by the Fire). There is also a small-scale sculpture from the early work of Cristina Iglesias, which comes from Galería Juana de Aizpuru, and from the collection of Laia Abril three works from the series On Rape, part of the broad and acclaimed photographic essay on rape resulting from the La Manada (Wolf Pack) sexual assault.

New additions also come in the form of sculptures by Sergi Aguilar, one of the core sculptors from Spain’s artistic landscape in the 1980s, as well as the only painting by Wila in the Museo’s possession, El solar (The Site, 1945), along with four of his posters from the Spanish Civil War, donated by his daughter, and other examples of graphic art by Miguel Prieto and Eduardo Herrero, the latter from the Socorro Romano Collection. As far as social painting is concerned, there are works around the turn of the twentieth century rendered by Graner Arrufí. Via Arturo Baltar Galician artists are represented, and with Iñaki Garmendia present-day art from the Basque Country, with work donated by the Meana Larrucea family.

The denouncement of colonialism is present through the gazes of Juan Roberto Diago (Cuba), Filiberto Obama Nsué, from Guinea, in joint work with Ramón Sales Encinas, and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, a Jewish-Palestinian artist who criticises Western constructions by revising texts such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

In the sphere of Latin American art, we can speak of Luis Fernando Zapata (Colombia), Rafaela Baroni (Venezuela), Jorge Camacho (Cuba) and Osvaldo Lamborghini (Argentina) by way of private and family donations.

Holdings of LGBTQIA+ themes and issues are also enriched in these acquisitions with works donated by artists such as Roberto González Fernández. From the visibility of the AIDS virus, the work of Pepe Miralles will engage with that of Zoe Leonard, David Wojnarowicz and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who in 2026 will be a central figure in one of the Museo’s most important exhibitions of the year.

From the scene of Portuguese modernity arrives work by Jose de Almada Negreiros, donated by the family of composer Salvador Bacarisse Chinoria, and from Switzerland the work of Thomas Hirschhorn, an exponent of post-war sculptural practices with a new vision of the public monument, and which is currently on view in the Reina in the new room called Single Piece, in homage to the late collector Fernando Meana.

During 2025, the Museo’s Library and Documentation Centre enhanced its collections with more than 3,000 works acquired through different channels, primarily in serial publications, monographs, artist’s books and documentary material. The donations received in 2025 are valued at more than 80,000 euros, most notably the collection of books and catalogues from Marlborough Gallery to the value of 10,500 euros, and the Archive of Spanish artist and film-maker José Luis Tirado, whose documentation chiefly spans the 1970s and 1980s.

Ministry of Culture

Spain’s Ministry of Culture continues its support of the Reina with 573,196 euros in direct acquisitions shared across 29 works by 20 artists. A change to the acquisitions management through which the Ministry supports the Museo Reina Sofía must also be mentioned: this year the percentage of acquisitions made directly by the Historical Heritage Assets Classification, Valuation and Export Board, later to be formalised as attributions to the Museo, is lower owing to the fact that its administrative procedure has changed to directly contribute to the Museo’s budget, to the sum of 2,206,389.11 euros. This translates into the Ministry of Culture making a total contribution to the Reina’s acquisitions of 2,779,585.11 euros.

This year, for the Reina the Ministry of Culture has acquired work by Francesc D’Assis Gallí, one of the most relevant artists of Catalan art in the first half of the twentieth century, and Enric Planasdurá, a central figure in the Catalan avant-garde from the 1950s and 1960s.

Integrated by way of auction are two creations by artist Antonio de Guezala, an important figure in the Basque scene in the first half of the twentieth century, a painting by Amalia Avia, a representative of Madrid realism who contributed to enhancing women’s presence in the 1960s and 1970s, and Recuerdo de Valencia (Memory of Valencia) from 1939, the first painting in the Museo’s possession by Valencian artist Manuela Ballester, thus expanding the presence of women in Latin American exile, particularly in Mexico.

In addition are the acquisitions made at the ARCO art fair with drawings by a key artist from the Generation of ’27, Victorina Durán, a rediscovered artist from the Canary Islands and a pioneer in the representation of female erotica, Maribel Nazco, as well as trailblazing contemporary art pioneer Marta Minujín, from Argentina.

Painter Ángela de la Cruz has been recovered within the Museo Reina Sofía Collections via one of her core works, while a sculpture by Elena Blasco and five works by María Luisa Fernández become new additions.

Textile holdings have also increased through a major work by Catalan artist Josep Grau-Garriga, while a graphic art series from 1969 by artist Robert Morris, an innovator of American Minimalism, also joins the Collections.

Acquired works in the most immediate present include those by Marina Vargas, who draws attention to the stigma of cancer from a feminist viewpoint, Raquel Manchado and the light she shines on widespread misogyny in the early twentieth century, and Laia Abril, who decries the continuing culture of rape in the twenty-first century. The Spanish artist of African descent, Agnes Essonti, photographs her family’s back-and-forth journey to their African origins. Mónica Planes and Mónica Mays are core exponents of the power of Spanish sculpture among new generations, while Carlos Rodriguez-Méndez has created one of the most profound representations of the mourning of contemporary conceptual art.

The Museo Reina Sofía Foundation

The Museo Reina Sofía Foundation, a private, non-profit body of cultural patronage, has acquired in the past year 45 works by 36 artists, to the total value of 4.6 million euros, reaffirming its commitment to enriching the Museo Reina Sofía Collections with a 64% increase from the previous fiscal year. Special mention must be made of the donations received, representing 91%.

Significant within the diverse ensemble of pieces received in 2025 is a set of fifteen works donated by Majorcan collector Mercedes Vilardell, encompassing relevant artists from the contemporary art scene, for instance Francis Alÿs, Sammy Baloji, Edgar Calel, Regina José Galindo, Cristina Iglesias, José Leonilson, Ibrahim Mahama, Joan Morey, Dan Perjovski, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Francesc Ruiz, Tomás Saraceno, Santiago Sierra and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Further donations received include works by artists previously absent from the Collections. Catalina D’Anglade adds a work by Karlos Gil, Mario Cáder Frech and Robert S. Wennett a piece by artist Donna Huanca, Sergio Butinof a canvas by artist Noé Leon, Francisco Sánchez Rivas an engraving by Alejandro Obregón and Natalia Cobo de Bulgheroni two sculptures known as Cajas Mágicas (Magic Boxes) by eclectic artist Ofelia Rodríguez.

This year has also seen the incorporation of works from external donations offered by collectors, artists and their families, for example Feliza Bursztyn with two minimáquinas (mini-machines) and a miniescultura (mini-sculpture), donated by Pablo and Camilo Leyva; Álvaro Barrios, with an ensemble of engravings received with the support of the Fernando Pradilla gallery; Luis Caballero, with one of his canvases from the 1970s, donated by collectors Harry and Esther Beda; Irene Cárdenas, with a painting, also from the 1970s, which sees her join the cluster of Latin American women who are representatives of modern art, by way of her son Diego Arteta; Manuel Espinosa, with two works of geometric abstraction through Ana María Espinosa; Anna Vitória Mussi, with two sculpture-installations of photographic negatives donated by collectors Olimpio Matarazzo and Patricia Kassab; Ofelia Rodríguez, with a canvas donated by her family, complementing the aforementioned works; Pol Taburet, with a work donated by collectors Frédéric and Delphine Derumeaux; Val del Omar, with 38 elements completing a donation made in 2021 from his PLAT laboratory and cell by Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga and the artist’s family.; and different Latin American artists via a set of thirteen works donated by collector Alejandro de Villota, including photography, engravings, silk-screen prints and collage.

In terms of purchases financed with regular funds from the 2025 budget, contributed annually by each member of the Foundation, the acquired works are by the following artists: Álvaro Barrios, Feliza Bursztyn, Ethel Gilmour, Beatriz González, Óscar Muñoz, Camilo Restrepo and José Alejandro Restrepo. This ensemble has, therefore, strengthened the different strategic research strands established in agreement with the Museo, with a focus on Latin America, particularly Colombia.

The Cáder Institute of Central American Art (ICAC) is behind the purchase of two works by Central American artists: a work by Elyla, a Nicaraguan artist who participated in the most recent Venice Biennale, and a work from the 1990s by Patricia Belli, also from Nicaragua and winner of the 2025 Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts. Moreover, through the Círculo Reina (Reina Circle), in implementing its mission to support young contemporary art, the artist Belén Rodríguez now becomes part of the Collection.

Finally, the Estate of Helen Frankenthaler and the Museo Reina Sofía Foundation (USA) have worked to incorporate into the Collections a major work the American artist made in Spain in 1957.

It must be noted that all artistic holdings are long-term loans to the Museo Reina Sofía and, should the Foundation cease to exist, all assets and rights will become property of the Museo.