The 10 Best Art Museums in Malaga

Situated in an elegant 16th century palace in the heart of Malaga’s old town, the city’s best-known gallery has a permanent collection of paintings from every period of Picasso‘s eclectic career. Malaga’s most famous son was born just a few minutes away from the museum, on Plaza Merced. Over the next three years, Museo Picasso Malaga will be displaying a further 166 of the artist´s works.

Exploring the artistic trends of the 20th century, CAC‘s permanent collection is particularly strong on international artists from 1950 to the present (think Damian Hirst and Thomas Ruff) and Spanish artists since the 1980s, with a focus on local, Malaga-born talent. The works – which include sculpture and installations – are displayed in futuristic white rooms and are complemented by a full events and educational calendar along with temporary exhibitions promoting Malaga’s up-and-coming artists.

For a fascinating look into Andalusia’s past, as captured by some of the region’s greatest painters, head to the Carmen Thyssen Museum. The permanent collection focuses on depictions of southern Spanish life and culture in the 1800s. One exhibition showcases works in the romantic style that prevailed in the first half of the century, with some wonderful scenes of rural Andalucia by Manuel Barrón y Carrillo; another looks at the realism adopted by artists working in the latter half of the century, with some important works by Mariano Fortuny Marsal.

For an exhaustive survey of local art from the 15th to 20th centuries, this modernist-looking museum facing Malaga’s stunning port is where you want to be. The permanent collection is superbly laid-out over three rooms, which focus on the 15th-18th, 19th and 20th centuries in turn. Early and late works of Picasso are explored in the second and third rooms respectively. The gallery’s temporary exhibitions take a rather different tack; at the time of writing, for example, a recreation of winter sports events celebrated in Malaga between 1945 and 1977 is running.

The only art museum in Spain to focus solely on the expressionist movement bears the name of the influential local artist (b.1941) who now splits his time between Malaga and Hamburg. Rando is considered a pioneer of Spanish expressionism and this colourful, challenging gallery devotes itself to his works and to those of other important expressionist painters and sculptors from around the world.

This museum takes its name from Felix Revello de Toro (b. 1926), a Malaga-born artist who in 2002 was awarded the title of “Favourite Son” by the regional government of Andalusia. The permanent collections features 142 of his works, including his distinctively erotic studies of the female figure. The other focus of the museum is the 17th century Granadino sculptor Pedro de Mena, in whose former house and studio this lovely museum is located. Mena produced important religious sculptures from his Malaga workshop, but is perhaps best remembered for designing the choir stalls in the city’s huge cathedral.

One of Andalusia´s quirkiest art galleries and museums takes you on a tour of beautiful glassware from different periods of history. Its 700-odd pieces range from Phoenician times to the present and are attractively displayed in rooms kitted out in the style of different epochs; on the ground floor, for example, are English pre-Raphaelite stained-glass windows. A fascinating and unusual museum, located in a cool and elegant 18th century Malaga house.

The unassuming Malaga townhouse on Plaza Merced in which Picasso was born in 1881 and in which he spent his formative years is now a lovely little museum and gallery. It is split into three sections over three floors, one of which displays a selection of works by Picasso and his father, Jose Ruiz Blasco, who was also a painter and an art teacher. On the ground floor various trinkets from Picasso family life can be examined, whilst the top floor is a research centre and library.