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Reina Sofía Unveils Maruja Mallo Retrospective Reuniting 1928 'Verbenas'

The show reclaims a career fractured by exile, presenting nearly 100 paintings with extensive archives plus two newly recovered works.

Overview

  • Opening in Madrid and on view through March 16, the exhibition surveys six decades of Mallo’s practice across painting, drawing, photography and stage design.
  • It assembles about a hundred paintings, roughly 70 drawings and comparable documents and photographs, using reproductions to represent works lost or dispersed.
  • The five early ‘verbenas’ oils that launched Mallo in 1928 appear together for the first time in nearly a century alongside a newly surfaced Arquitectura mineral and an unpublished family-held drawing.
  • Co-organized with Fundación Botín, the exhibition frames Mallo as a pioneering author of the modern woman’s image, drawing on popular culture, sport and festival scenes.
  • Her Argentine exile is explored in the darker ‘Cloacas y campanarios’ section, while an ephemeral 12-by-2-meter entrance carpet by Asociación Cunchas e Flores de Bueu, supported by Galicia’s regional government, greets visitors.