Accident at the Reina Sofía Museum. An Italian tourist stumbled yesterday in one of the rooms of the permanent collection and in her fall she grabbed, partially tearing her, an important work by Alberto, the set design for the ballet La pilgrimage of the cuckolds. A work based on the Romance of Fuente Viva by Lorca that was premiered in 1933 by the company of La Argentinita with music by Gustavo Pittaluga and a libretto by Cipriano Rivas Cheriff. The scenography, a 14 by 7 meter water painting on paper, has been torn several centimeters but the museum will not file a complaint against the tourist because they consider that there has been no fraud and they have already been able to repair it in situ and it is again in sight.
The versions on how the fall has taken place differ. And different versions also circulate about the woman's reaction after the accident. If some media assure that the stumble occurred when the tourist was going to take a selfie, from the museum they say that what happened is exceptional because it does not happen every day, but they play down the matter. They assure that an Italian tourist simply committed an imprudence. She climbed onto the platform on which the scenery of La pilgrimage of the horned is placed, she tripped and grabbed the side of the work, tearing it a few centimeters under the right front part. Maybe she went to take a selfie, but the museum has no record.
After the accident, the protocol was activated: the museum's restoration services attended and, as it was a question of damage to a public asset, the police were notified, although the museum did not file a complaint because there was no malicious intent. The woman, they say, was in the grip of a nervous breakdown, and even more so her husband, and they say that they are not aware, although they do not deny it either, that she refused to provide her data and that she had to go to the police for that.
During the day yesterday a screen was placed in the space where it was exhibited and the restorers began to work. At ten o'clock today the damage was already restored and the piece did not have to be taken to the restoration workshop or disassembled, and today it was once again on public view.
The scenery of La pilgrimage of the horned was conceived by the sculptor and painter Alberto (Alberto Sánchez, Toledo, 1895-Moscow, 1962, author of the sculpture that presides over the Plaza del Reina Sofía, The Spanish people have a path that leads to a star) as an arid dreamscape of Castilian inspiration inhabited by bony and sinuous shapes in keeping with the work he had been doing together with the painter Benjamín Palencia in the so-called Escuela de Vallecas.
