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Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Review

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Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Address: Av. del Libertador 1473, La Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires
Phone: 11/4803-0802 tours (in Spanish)
www.mnba.org.ar

Category: Museums/Galleries
Location: Recoleta

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Fodor's Review:

At the National Museum of Fine Arts, some 11,000 works—from drawings and paintings to statues and tapestries—are displayed in a huge golden-colored stone building whose elegant columned front belies the fact that it used to be the city's waterworks. The ground-floor European collection has 24 rooms of dimly lit galleries arranged chronologically. Information about the works is in Spanish only; it's also lengthy and overly academic, so if you don't speak Spanish you're not missing much. The wing at the left has medieval religious paintings and minor works by El Greco, Goya, Rubens, Tiepolo, Titian, and Zurbarán. The circuit leads you back behind the entrance hall to some of the museum's many Rodin sculptures. The right wing contains 19th- and 20th-century French art, including paintings by Manet, Degas, Monet, Pisarro, Gaugin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Look also for works by Klee, Kandinsky, Modigliani, Chagall, and Picasso.

Truth be told, though, it's the world's biggest collection of 19th- and 20th-century Argentine art that's the draw here. You're much better off heading straight to the first floor galleries, while you're still feeling fresh. Leave the European collection for later.

The beautifully curated Argentine circuit starts in Room 102 with works from colonial times through the 19th century. Overviews on the wall are clear and interesting but in Spanish only. Don't miss the María Luisa Bemberg Room, tucked away off to the right, with pieces by artists from the River Plate area. Follow the galleries around to the right, where early 20th-century works include 1920s salon art and scenes of port life in La Boca. The huge final gallery down the ramp shows the involvement of Argentine artists in European avant-garde movements before adopting homegrown ideas. Works here include geometric sculptures and the so-called informalismo (informalism) of the '60s, marked by its innovative use of collage. Psychedelic paintings, op art, and kinetic works follow. The circuit finishes with contemporary Argentine artists. Be sure to check out the corner covering 30 years of conceptual art.

Highlights of the Argentine Collection: Battle paintings by Cándido López, who learned to paint with his left hand after losing his right arm in the War of the Triple Alliance of the 1870s (his work spearheaded contemporary primitive painting); landscapes by local master Eduardo Sívori; turn-of-the-century gaucho portraits by Cesáreo Bernaldo de Quirós; the highly colored depiction of port laborers in Elevadores a Pleno Sol by Benito Quinquela Martín, La Boca's unofficial painter laureate; Emilio Pettorutti's El Improvisador (1937), which combines cubist techniques with a Renaissance sense of space; Lino Enea Spilimbergo's Terracita (1932), an enigmatic urban landscape; the early figurative paintings and latter-day collages of Antonio Berni, enfant terrible turned grand old man of Argentine painting; autodidact and '60s cultural guru Jorge de la Vega's huge abstract canvases.

Multitasking security staff in the entrance hall are too rushed to deal with questions, and although the themed guided tours are excellent, they're only offered in Spanish. If you only speak English, check into the MP3 audio guides (15 pesos) in the scant gift shop at the bottom of the stairs.

Cost: Free
Open: Tues.-Fri. 12:30-7:30, weekends 9:30-7:30

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