The museum houses works from the late Middle Ages, through Italian primitives, the Impressionism of Monet and Degas, and modern art, to American painting by Pollock, Kandinsky and Hopper. The collection, of private origin and belonging to the Thyssen family, dates back to 1871 with the acquisition of seven Rodin statues by August Thyssen. Today it belongs to the Spanish State and brings together key works from the Italian and German Renaissance, Dutch Baroque, Impressionism, the avant-garde, and post-World War II American art.