Duccio, Van Eyck, Carpaccio, Lucas Cranach, Dürer, Caravaggio, Rubens, Frans Hals, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Kirchner, Mondrian, Klee, Hopper, Rauschenberg ... These are just some of the great masters of art history whose works are on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. The museum currently houses two collections from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collector-lineage: the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, acquired by the Spanish government from Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1993 and on permanent display since the museum opened in 1992; and the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, owned by the baron’s widow and held in deposit by the museum since 2004. These two collections comprise almost one thousand works of art, most of them paintings, with which the museum offers a stroll down the history of European painting, from its beginning in the 13th century to the close of the 20th century.

Standing almost opposite the Prado Museum and very near the Reina Sofía Modern Art Museum, this new museum, which architect Rafael Moneo was commissioned to design, was the missing cornerstone that finally sealed the triangle of art. With the presence of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, the most important private collection in the world before it was acquired by the Spanish state in June 1993 for 350 million dollars, few cities can match Madrid’s appeal for art lovers.

One of the key characteristics of the Thyssen-Bonemisza Museum is that it complements the Prado’s collection of old paintings and the modern art housed at the Reina Sofía Museum, featuring movements and styles such as the Italian and Dutch primitives, German Renaissance art, 17th century Dutch painting, Impressionism, German Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art. And, setting it apart, its singular display of 19th century North American painting, practically unknown in Europe, which occupies two halls of the museum.

The history and origins of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection tell one of the most fascinating tales of private collecting. Although the collection boasted worldwide renown, when the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum opened in Madrid in October 1992, showcasing the core of the collection together for the very first time, one thing that prompted most admiration was that such a large number of works, and such quality works, had been collected in just two generations. It was, without a doubt, the most important private art collection of the 20th century.

Apart from a brief but interesting forerunner in the person of the baron’s grandfather, August Thyssen, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection is the fruit of the collectors’ zeal of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his father, Heinrich, the first Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, who started it in the 1920s. He was interested mainly in ancient art and amassed some 525 paintings until his death in 1947. The first public exhibition of the works he had collected was held in 1930 at the Alte Pinakothek Museum in Munich. Two years later, in order to house an ever-growing collection, the baron bought Villa Favorita in Lugano, Switzerland, from Prince Leopold of Prussia. When the baron died, the collection was divided up among his heirs, and the youngest of his four children and the one who had inherited the title, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, bought back works from his relatives and put the collection together again. To start with, he continued to buy antique painting, but later, in the sixties, he began the Modern Masters’ Collection. Initially he focused on German Expressionism, an art form labelled as "degenerate art” by the Nazis who destroyed a large number of these works. Little by little, the baron’s fascination for German Expressionism led to him to acquire the works of Russian avant-garde artists and other pioneers of abstract art. Thus he came to own major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, European painting from the start of the 20th century, post-war English painting – Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, etc. – and North American painting from the 19th and 20th centuries.

The collection outgrew Villa Favorita (where only 300 paintings could be displayed) so the baron decided to look for a new home for his works. The quality of the building in Madrid offered by the Spanish state and, in particular, its proximity to the Prado Museum, influenced his decision to move the collection to Spain. And it was there in Madrid, in the 19th century Villahermosa Palace, where the all but complete collection was showcased for the very first time. The permanent installation of the collection in Spain was thought to be the culmination of that relatively short but very intensive collecting spree, but not so. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza picked up the baton and, continuing in the family tradition, has had her own collection for some years now, which includes both the legacy of the works left by her husband and an ever-growing number of new acquisitions.

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