24 de November de 2017
Around 20 students from different countries and study programs at EAE Business School had the chance to get to know each other on Tuesday 21st March at the entrance to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. This was the first cultural visit for all the participants, as they only recently started their Master programs, with some of them only having arrived in Madrid a couple of months ago.
Run by a foundation under public supervision, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza has a permanent exhibition, which the students visited. There are over 700 works of art in the family's collection in this section. Moreover, in the annex, there were another 240 masterpieces on display, on loan from, Baron Thyssen's widow.
The EAE Business School students emphasized how 'thorough' the tour had been, giving them the opportunity to see, analyse and contemplate artworks from different styles and schools. From the Italian Renaissance of the 13th to 14th Centuries and masterpieces from the Dutch Baroque period, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and North American paintings, all the way up to the avant-garde and paintings from the First and Second World Wars and the inter-war period.
Thanks to this variety of styles and periods, the participants had the chance to see how ways of painting and artistic expression have evolved over the years, as well as artistic concepts themselves. In the first rooms on the tour, the students say masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance and Quattrocento Period, with pieces by artists such as Domenico Ghirlandaio and his Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, an artwork featured alongside Vittore Carpaccio's Young Knight in a Landscape, which is remarkable as it is the first life-sized full-body portrait.
Other masterpieces by Tiziano, El Greco and Caravaggio's famous Saint Catherine were on display for the students to enjoy in the Museum's gallery overlooking the Paseo del Prado. The guide who accompanied the students on the two-hour tour explained the evolution of the painters and the importance of other artists, such as José de Ribera, Zurbarán and Murillo, on the Spanish art scene.
The first floor of the Museum contains the works of the Dutch Masters, Impressionists and modern artists. This sections first focuses on landscapes, still life and everyday subject matter, before moving on to Impressionism, "the Museum's flagship collection", as the guide explained. In the enormous rooms, we had the chance to marvel at works of Grand Masters such as Manet, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, etc., as well as masterpieces of the Post-Impressionist era, with four paintings from different periods, with Van Gogh leading the way.
To finish off the tour, the students looked around the exhibitions of North American paintings from the 18th and 19th Centuries, a little-known field of art history in Europe, with a collection put together by Baron Thyssen over the course of just a few years. In addition, after the guided tour, all the students decided to stay for longer in the Museum to visit the temporary exhibitions and Baroness Thyssen's collection.
"I loved it" confirmed María Escaño, a student on the Part-Time Master in Executive Development, Emotional Intelligence and Coaching. This resounding response was shared by the rest of the students, who came both from Spain (like María) and various countries in Latin America: Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, etc. "It is a real luxury to be able to go on these visit and hear the detailed explanations of what we are looking at", added María Gracia, a student on the Master in Commercial and Sales Management. They both expressed their interest in signing up for future visits run by EAE Business School and thanked the School for the opportunity to discover Madrid in this way.