Museo Reina Sofía Acquires Jean Fautrier Painting from Foundation Grandur

Jean Claude Gandur (Switzerland, 1949), one of the world's most important collectors, is to loan the Museum 15 works of the European post-war avant-garde through his Fondation Gandur pour l'Art. Most of them are non-figurative pictorial works by the Second School of Paris (1946-1962) which radically question the aesthetic principles of western culture in response to the loss of horizons after the Second World War.

This temporary loan for an extendable period of 2 years is the result of Gandur's wish to bring his works closer to the public, and of the Museo Reina Sofía's interest in strengthening one of the cores of its Collection, the section ranging from Informalism to New Realism, and looking more deeply into several movements that had not been represented in the Collection until now, such as the CoBrA group.

Through its acceptance of this loan, the Reina Sofía will be able to display some of the most significant pieces of the forties and fifties, such as Sarah (1943), the well-known work by Jean Fautrier, which will be shown for the first time at the same venue as Pablo Picasso's Guernica(1937), a work it was compared with in its day by such writers as Ponge and Sartre.

Moreover, the selection includes works by artists of the stature of Constant, Asger Jorn, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier and Wols, who were already represented in the Reina Sofía Collection, and seven other artists whose work had not appeared in it before: Karel Appel, Corneille, César, Daniel Spoerri, Mimmo Rotella, Jean-Michel Atlan and Bram van Velde.