

The Círculo de Bellas Artes is a private, non-profit, cultural organization that was founded in 1880. Its building, located in
Madrid
Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
,
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
, was declared ''
Bien de Interés Cultural
(, , , ) is a category of the heritage register in Spain. The term is also used in Colombia and other Spanish-speaking countries.
The term literally means a "good of cultural interest" ("goods" in the economic sense). It includes not only mater ...
'' in 1981.
The CBA is a major multidisciplinary centre with one of the most active cultural programmes in Madrid. It has exhibition rooms, a cinema, a theatre, concert halls, lecture halls, artists’ workshops, a library, a cafeteria, a shop and many other facilities. Every day it puts on activities to do with the visual arts, music, film, the stage, literature, science, philosophy and poetry.
The building which houses the Círculo de Bellas Artes was designed by the architect
Antonio Palacios and constructed in 1926.
Exhibitions
Four exhibition rooms with a stable programme in which both well-established figures and emerging artists are represented every year:
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...
,
Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
,
Jean Arp
Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (; ; 16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.
Early life
Arp was born Hans Peter Wilhelm Ar ...
,
Silvia Plachy,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
,
Pier Paolo Passolini,
Henri Michaux
Henri Michaux (; 24 May 1899 – 19 October 1984) was a Belgian-born French poet, writer and painter. Michaux is renowned for his strange, highly original poetry and prose, and also for his art: the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenhei ...
,
Hans Hartung
Hans Hartung (21 September 1904 – 7 December 1989) was a German-French painter, known for his gestural abstract style. He was also a decorated World War II veteran of the Legion d'honneur.
Life
Hartung was born in Leipzig, Germany, into an ...
,
Bruno Schulz
Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was a History of the Jews in Poland, Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, Literary criticism, literary critic and Art education, art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish (language), Po ...
,
Pierre Klossowski
Pierre Klossowski (; ; 9 August 1905 – 12 August 2001) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.
Life
Born in ...
, Nacho Criado,
Basilio Martín Patino, Zaj,
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (; 31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French Painting, painter and sculpture, sculptor of the School of Paris, École de Paris (School of Paris). His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" a ...
,
Mário Cesariny,
Brassaï
Brassaï (; pseudonym of Gyula Halász, ; 9 September 1899 – 8 July 1984) was a Hungarian–French photographer, sculptor, medalist, writer, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerou ...
...
Humanities
A meeting point for thought, the sciences, literature, philosophy and the arts. The conferences, talks, discussions and poetry recitals that are organised on a daily basis have involved leading figures from the world of culture such as
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gda ...
,
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...
,
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt S ...
,
Rafael Alberti,
George Steiner
Francis George Steiner, Fellow of the British Academy#Fellowship, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between ...
,
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual.
He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distin ...
,
Claudio Magris,
Antonio Gamoneda,
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger (11 November 1929 – 24 November 2022) was a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Andreas Thalmayr, Elisabeth Ambras, Linda Quilt and Giorgio Pellizzi. Enzensberger was regarde ...
,
Cees Nooteboom
Cornelis Johannes Jacobus Maria "Cees" Nooteboom (; born 31 July 1933) is a Dutch novelist, poet and journalist. After the attention received by his novel '' Rituals'' (''Rituelen'', 1980), which won the Pegasus Prize, it was the first of his n ...
,
Manoel de Oliveira
Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira (; 11 December 1908 – 2 April 2015) was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about Wor ...
,
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard (, ; ; – 6 March 2007) was a French sociology, sociologist and philosopher with an interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as hi ...
,
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian Medieval studies, medievalist, philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular ...
,
Juan Gelman
Juan Gelman (3 May 1930 – 14 January 2014) was an Argentine poet. He published more than twenty books of poetry between 1956 and his death in early 2014. He was a naturalized citizen of Mexico, where he arrived as a political exile of the Proc ...
,
John Berger
John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...
,
Ernesto Sábato
Ernesto Sabato (; June 24, 1911 – April 30, 2011) was an Argentine novelist, essayist, painter, and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary ...
,
Álvaro Siza Álvaro or Álvar (, , ) is a Spanish, Galician and Portuguese male given name and surname of Germanic Visigothic origin.
The patronymic surname derived from this name is Álvarez.
Given name Artists
* Álvaro Carrillo, Afro-Mexican songwrit ...
,
Carlos Fuentes
Carlos Fuentes Macías (; ; November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are ''The Death of Artemio Cruz'' (1962), '' Aura'' (1962), '' Terra Nostra'' (1975), '' The Old Gringo'' (1985) and '' Christop ...
and
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of Postcolonialism, post-co ...
.
Shows
The Círculo de Bellas Artes programmes a wide variety of music, encompassing both classical and contemporary highbrow music, and the more innovative styles of popular music. Those who have performed here include
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 19255 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music.
Born in Montb ...
,
Luis de Pablo
Luis de Pablo Costales (28 January 1930 – 10 October 2021) was a Spanish composer belonging to the generation that Cristóbal Halffter named ''the Generación del 51''. Mostly self-taught as a composer and influenced by Maurice Ohana and Max ...
,
Lila Downs,
Tiken Jah Fakoly,
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull (29 December 1946 – 30 January 2025) was an English singer and actress who achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her UK top 10 single " As Tears Go By". She became one of the leading female art ...
,
Vinicio Capossela
Vinicio Capossela (born 14 December 1965) is an Italian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist.
Capossela is renowned for the highly original and poetic lyrics of his songs. Many of them draw from traditions of Italian folk music, especially thos ...
,
Jane Birkin
Jane Mallory Birkin ( ; 14 December 1946 – 16 July 2023) was a British and French actress, singer, and designer. She had a prolific career as an actress, mostly in French cinema.
A native of London, Birkin began her career as an actress, ...
,
María Joao and
Chano Lobato
Chano Lobato (December 1927 in Cadiz – 5 April 2009 in Seville) was a Spanish flamenco singer.
Born in the Santa María neighborhood of Cadiz, he began performing at nightclubs in his hometown and later moved to Madrid, where he joined Alej ...
.
Films
The CBA has a film theatre which every day shows original-language films that are not normally seen in commercial cinemas. Its retrospectives and dedicated cycles are a must for film-lovers in Madrid.
Workshops
In addition to the drawing, painting and etching open workshops, for many decades artists and intellectuals have taught at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, including
Pablo Palazuelo
Pablo Palazuelo (October 8, 1915 – October 3, 2007) was a Spanish painter and sculptor
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically ...
,
Antonio Saura
Antonio Saura Atarés (September 22, 1930 – July 22, 1998) was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-war painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is ...
,
Eduardo Arroyo,
Juan Navarro Baldeweg,
Antoni Muntadas,
Nancy Spero,
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings"—with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been a ...
,
Esther Ferrer
Esther Ferrer (born 1937 in San Sebastián, Spain) is a Spanish performance artist. Ferrer received Spain's National Award for Plastic Arts (1999), the Marie-Claire Prize for Contemporary Art in France, and the Velázquez Plastic Arts Prize.
...
,
Juan Muñoz, Juan Genovés,
Alberto García-Alix,
Agustín Ibarrola
Agustín Ibarrola (18 August 1930 – 17 November 2023) was a Spanish painter and sculptor.
Biography
Ibarrola was born in Basauri, Biscay, Basque Country (autonomous community), Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. In 1948, the Delegation of Bi ...
,
Ramón Masats,
Chema Madoz,
Donald Kuspit
Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art.
Educatio ...
,
Georges Didi-Huberman
Georges Didi-Huberman Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (born 13 June 1953) is a French people, French philosopher and art historian.
Biography
Georges Didi-Huberman was born on 13 June 1953 in Saint-Étienne, into a Sephardic family from Tun ...
,
Iñaki Ábalos
Iñaki Ábalos ( Donostia, 1956) is a Spanish architect and author.
Ábalos is a graduate of Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, and from 2013 to 2016 he was Professor in Residence and Chair of the Department of Architecture ...
, Nacho Criado and
Dominique Perrault.
Radio
Radio Círculo is a radio station broadcasting via the Internet whose programmes are dedicated entirely to the world of culture.
Publications
The cultural activity is collected and disseminated in a wide-ranging catalogue of publications that include essay, art and poetry collections, as well as the ''Minerva'' magazine, one of the most important cultural publications in Spanish. The Círculo de Bellas Artes regularly produces music CDs and documentary films on artistic subjects.
Gold Medals
Since 1991, the CBA has awarded with its Gold Medal the work of creators such as
Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal Terán (; ; born August 11, 1932) is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist, and poet. He was born in Melilla and settled in France in 1955. Regarding his nationality, Arrabal describes himself as "desterra ...
,
Francisco Umbral,
Carmen Martín Gaite,
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gda ...
,
Álvaro Siza Álvaro or Álvar (, , ) is a Spanish, Galician and Portuguese male given name and surname of Germanic Visigothic origin.
The patronymic surname derived from this name is Álvarez.
Given name Artists
* Álvaro Carrillo, Afro-Mexican songwrit ...
,
Alicia Alonso
Alicia Alonso (born Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martínez del Hoyo; 21 December 1920 – 17 October 2019) was a Cuban prima ballerina assoluta and choreographer whose company became the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in 1955. She is bes ...
,
Antonio Saura
Antonio Saura Atarés (September 22, 1930 – July 22, 1998) was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-war painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is ...
,
Carlos Fuentes
Carlos Fuentes Macías (; ; November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are ''The Death of Artemio Cruz'' (1962), '' Aura'' (1962), '' Terra Nostra'' (1975), '' The Old Gringo'' (1985) and '' Christop ...
,
Antoni Tàpies
Antoni Tàpies i Puig, 1st Marquess of Tápies, Marquess of Tàpies (; 13 December 1923 – 6 February 2012) was a Catalans, Catalan painter, sculptor, and art theorist.
Life
The son of Josep Tàpies i Mestre and Maria Puig i Guerra, Antoni T ...
,
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard (, ; ; – 6 March 2007) was a French sociology, sociologist and philosopher with an interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as hi ...
,
Massimo Cacciari
Massimo Cacciari (; born 5 June 1944) is an Italian philosopher and politician who served as Mayor of Venice from 1993 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2010.
Biography
Born in Venice, Cacciari graduated in philosophy from the University of Padua (1967), ...
,
Elías Querejeta
Elías Querejeta Gárate (27 October 1934 – 9 June 2013), also known as Elías Querejeta () and known in the Spanish film industry as "The Producer", was a Spanish screenwriter and film producer. He is the father of Gracia Querejeta.
Biograp ...
,
Ana María Matute,
Manoel de Oliveira
Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira (; 11 December 1908 – 2 April 2015) was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about Wor ...
,
Agustín Ibarrola
Agustín Ibarrola (18 August 1930 – 17 November 2023) was a Spanish painter and sculptor.
Biography
Ibarrola was born in Basauri, Biscay, Basque Country (autonomous community), Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. In 1948, the Delegation of Bi ...
y
Luis de Pablo
Luis de Pablo Costales (28 January 1930 – 10 October 2021) was a Spanish composer belonging to the generation that Cristóbal Halffter named ''the Generación del 51''. Mostly self-taught as a composer and influenced by Maurice Ohana and Max ...
,
John Berger
John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...
,
Antonio Gamoneda,
Carles Santos,
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, Ge ...
,
Raimon,
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Ruff Jameson (April 14, 1934 – September 22, 2024) was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmode ...
,
Jordi Savall
Jordi Savall i Bernadet (; born 1 August 1941) is a Spanish Conducting, conductor, composer and viol player. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for popularizing the viol ...
,
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie ( ; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern wor ...
,
Gonzalo Suárez,
Georges Didi-Huberman
Georges Didi-Huberman Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (born 13 June 1953) is a French people, French philosopher and art historian.
Biography
Georges Didi-Huberman was born on 13 June 1953 in Saint-Étienne, into a Sephardic family from Tun ...
,
Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Olavi Kaurismäki (; born 4 April 1957) is a Finnish film director and screenwriter. He is best known for the award-winning '' Drifting Clouds'' (1996), '' The Man Without a Past'' (2002), ''Le Havre'' (2011), '' The Other Side of Hope'' (201 ...
,
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual.
He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distin ...
,
Teresa Berganza
Teresa Berganza Vargas OAXS (16 March 1933 – 13 May 2022) was a Spanish mezzo-soprano. She is most closely associated with roles such as Rossini's Rosina and La Cenerentola, and later Bizet's Carmen, admired for her technical virtuosity, mu ...
,
Javier Solana
Francisco Javier Solana de Madariaga CYC (; born 14 July 1942) is a Spanish physicist and PSOE politician. After serving in the Spanish government as Foreign Affairs Minister under Felipe González (1992–1995) and as the Secretary Gener ...
,
Gianni Vattimo
Gianteresio Vattimo (; 4 January 1936 – 19 September 2023) was an Italian philosopher and politician.
Biography
Gianteresio Vattimo was born in Turin, Piedmont. He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the Universit ...
.
Rental spaces
The CBA is a reference space and a guarantee for many companies that organise events, as it provides them with the ideal setting for putting their ideas into practice. The CBA building has 15,000 square metres of floor space including four exhibition halls, a floor of workshops, six multi-purpose rooms, a library, and a billiards and games room, a theatre, two historical rooms –the ''Salón de Baile'' (Ballroom) and the ''Sala de Columnas'' (Hall of Columns)-, a cinema, a radio station, a bookshop and a big café-restaurant popularly known as ''La Pecera'', or the goldfish bowl.
See also
*
Statue of Minerva (Madrid)
External links
*
Spanish version of this page
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Circulo De Bellas Artes
Buildings and structures in Cortes neighborhood, Madrid
Bien de Interés Cultural landmarks in Madrid
Calle de Alcalá
Cultural organisations based in Spain