Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
| Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza | |
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 Location within Madrid
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| Established | 1992 |
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| Location | Paseo del Prado, 8, Madrid, Spain |
| Coordinates | 40°24′58″N 3°41′42″W / 40.41611°N 3.69500°WCoordinates: 40°24′58″N 3°41′42″W / 40.41611°N 3.69500°W |
| Collection size | 1,600 |
| Visitors | 965,491 (2015) |
| Founder | Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon |
| Director | Guillermo Solana |
| Website | www |
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (in Spanish, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (pronounced: [muˈse.o ˈtisem boɾneˈmisa]), named after its founder), or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum at one of city's main boulevards. It is known as part of the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofia national galleries. The Thyssen-Bornemisza fills the historical gaps in its counterparts' collections: in the Prado's case this includes Italian primitives and works from the English, Dutch and German schools, while in the case of the Reina Sofia it concerns Impressionists, Expressionists, and European and American paintings from the 20th century.
With over 1,600 paintings, it was once the second largest private collection in the world after the British Royal Collection. A competition was held to house the core of the collection in 1987-88 after Baron Thyssen, having tried to enlarge his Museum in Lugano (Villa Favorita), searched for a location in Europe.
The museum received 945,000 visitors in 2013.
The collection was started in the 1920s as a private collection by Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon. In a reversal of the movement of European paintings to the US during this period, one of the elder Baron's sources was the collections of American millionaires coping with the Great Depression and inheritance taxes. In this way he acquired old master paintings such as Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni (once in the Morgan Library) and Carpaccio's Knight (from the collection of Otto Kahn). The collection was later expanded by Heinrich's son Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921–2002), who assembled most of the works from his relatives' collections and proceeded to acquire large numbers of new works (from Gothic art to Lucien Freud).
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