The Reina Sof\u00eda\u2019s new rehang opens, quite pointedly, with a painting of a detained man sitting, head bowed and wrists shackled, as he waits for the arbitrary hand of institutional bureaucracy to decide his fate.<\/p>\n
The picture, Document No \u2026, was painted by Juan Genov\u00e9s in 1975, the year Francisco Franco died and Spain<\/a> began its transition to democracy after four decades of dictatorship. Genov\u00e9s\u2019s faceless, everyman victim of the Franco regime\u2019s control and repression is the natural starting point for the Madrid museum\u2019s exploration of the past 50 years of contemporary art in Spain.<\/p>\n Through the 403 selected works, the museum\u2019s curators examine how artists from Spain and beyond have chronicled and reacted to socio-historical changes, from the hedonistic explosion of creativity that followed the dictator\u2019s demise to the Aids epidemic, from second-wave feminism to growing environmental awareness, and from decolonisation to global terrorism.<\/p>\n According to \u00c1ngeles Gonz\u00e1lez-Sinde, the president of the Reina Sof\u00eda\u2019s board, the rehang \u2013 an exercise museums undertake to re-evaluate and reinvigorate their collections \u2013 is much more than a simple rejigging. Almost two-thirds of the works on display in the new Contemporary Art: 1975 to the Present<\/a> collection, which occupies the museum\u2019s fourth floor, have never been exhibited as part of the permanent collection.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than an exhibition reorganisation, it\u2019s a critical reinterpretation that seeks to contextualise artistic practices in dialogue with the social, political and cultural processes that have marked these five decades,\u201d she told a press conference on Monday.<\/p>\n \u2018More than an exhibition reorganisation, it\u2019s a critical reinterpretation.\u2019 Photograph: Roberto Ruiz\/Museo Reina Sof\u00eda<\/p>\n Alongside works by internationally known artists such as Nan Goldin, Hal Fischer, Peter Hujar, Belkis Ay\u00f3n<\/a> and Robert Mapplethorpe are pieces that chart a rapidly changing Spanish society. The exiled Argentinian photographer Carlos Bosch used his camera to document key moments of the Transition \u2013 the process by which post-Franco Spain returned to democracy \u2013 among them Spain\u2019s first gay pride march in 1977. The artist and queer activist Jos\u00e9 P\u00e9rez Oca\u00f1a employed altar installations to appropriate and subvert the popular rituals of Andaluc\u00edan Catholicism.<\/p>\n The collection also features items of jewellery by the designer Chus Bur\u00e9s, who has created pieces for two films by Pedro Almod\u00f3var, perhaps the most famous figure of the wild and wildly creative post-Franco underground scene known as the Movida madrile\u00f1a<\/a>.<\/p>\n