The Prado Museum has decided to turn its back on visitors. Visitors to the latest exhibition at the Madrid Museum of Fine Arts are greeted not with the sheer splendor of Velázquez's Las Meninas, his most famous work, but with a grim life-size replica of the painting's reverse.

Self-portraits by Goya, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh include a devout nun who appears to be exposing her buttocks, a framed painting that is evidence of its seizure by the Nazis, and Picasso's Guernica removed from its original frame. There are five dilapidated wooden beams.

The idea of the new exhibition, entitled 'Reversos', takes the viewer beyond the surface of the artistic image, and takes the physical painting, its back and its frame, into the hidden The idea is to encourage them to see it as an object. But it can also reveal secrets, stories, and meanings.

According to Miguel Fallomir, director of the Prado Museum, the origin of the exhibition is in Las Meninas, where Velázquez gazes at visitors from behind a huge canvas in progress.

``This exhibition wants to remind us of what I think Velázquez would have thought if he were here: that art, and especially painting, is not just the image itself,'' he said. Told.

“Works of art are three-dimensional. Focusing only on images that recreate a particular moment frozen in time can provide some information, but it is difficult to understand everything that the work means as an object. What I'm saying is that when you look at a piece, its back, its frame, it's like standing in front of an archaeological find, each layer has its own story to tell.

To this end, the museum's curators have created an exhibition in which Miguel Ángel Blanco brings together 105 works from the Prado Museum and 29 international museums and collections. They were installed in two black-painted rooms to create a "cave-like atmosphere" of mystery and revelation.

Some works can be viewed from both sides, and the painted side is hung on the wall to better show long-unseen messages, stamps, and sketches while decorating the back. There are some things.

Fallomir likens the exhibition to Alice in Wonderland - ``It's like entering another dimension that doesn't exist there, a hidden but very important dimension, where you can see as much of the work as the front.

Reversos is divided into 10 sections and offers visitors sights that have been previously denied them. And where the object cannot be approached - usually it is a picture frame. “It’s wall-mounted and has safety equipment,” Blanco said.

``And sometimes the back of the painting is sealed.