Barack Obama joins Spanish King Felipe VI for museum tour in Madrid

Spanish King Felipe VI (R) welcoming US former President Barack Obama (L) before visiting the National Museum Reina Sofia Art Center in Madrid. / AFP

Former US President Barack Obama on Saturday accompanied King Felipe VI of Spain on a private tour of the Reina Sofia modern art museum in the Spanish capital, where the pair admired masterpieces from the likes of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.

Obama and King Felipe spent time admiring Picasso's 1937 work of art "Guernica", which depicts the aftermath of the bombing of the town of Guernica in Spain's Basque region carried out by Italian and Nazi German planes on the petition of Spanish nationalist forces during the Civil War (1936-39).

According to Spain's royal household, Felipe gifted Obama a book about Guernica, in which he wrote a message to the US politician that described Picasso's painting as "a tireless icon of the most universal art", Efe news reported.

The Reina Sofia museum, one of the most important in Spain, forms part of Madrid's so-called Golden Triangle of Art given its location close to the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museums.

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