Image: Andy Warhol, 'Knives' (1982). Long-term loan of private collection, Madrid, 2011. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía has drawn attention to Andy Warhol's 'Knives' (Cuchillos, 1982), currently on view in its collection display in Madrid. The museum's notice places the painting on Floor 4, Room 3, and describes it as one of thirty-five works Warhol made expressly for a single occasion, each built around three symbols the museum characterises as carrying a heavy dramatic charge.
The museum's catalogue entry records the work as acrylic and screen printing ink on canvas, measuring 176.5 by 133.4 cm. It is not owned outright by the museum: the entry lists it as a long-term loan from a private collection in Madrid, on deposit since 2011 under registration number DO01515.
The room in which it hangs supplies the historical frame. Room 3 is titled 'Attempts at and Limits of an Institutional Regime for Art in Democracy' and gathers 22 works dealing with post-Franco Spain's push to bring its contemporary art scene into step with the wider world. In the museum's account of the period, commercial galleries became the key sites of international exchange, and it singles out Warhol's visit to Madrid's Fernando Vijande gallery as a milestone of that moment — the context in which the 'Knives' canvases were produced.
The same room text sets that ambition against its limits, using the failed plan for a Richard Serra sculpture in Madrid as its case study: the project was dropped first over public health objections at Plaza de Callao, then again after a second site at Atocha was chosen, following the death of Enrique Tierno Galván, the city's mayor during La Movida. The museum reads the episode as evidence of a transition attempting to make up lost time without the social or institutional foundations to sustain it.
The museum's post is a collection highlight rather than a temporary exhibition announcement, so no opening or closing dates apply; the practical detail for visitors is the location, Floor 4, Room 3, at Calle Santa Isabel 52 in Madrid.
