80 years on, Picasso classic on war as relevant as ever
Print Edition
EIGHTY years after the bloody air raid on the Spanish town of Guernica that drove Pablo Picasso to paint a masterpiece, a new exhibition in Madrid highlights the enduring relevance of his depiction.
Adolf Hitler sent aircraft in support of Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces to strike the Basque town on the afternoon of April 26, 1937, killing as many as 1,600 and wounding hundreds.
The show at the Reina Sofia museum, the painting’s home since 1992, includes newspaper photographs of the destruction which the Spanish artist saw at home in Paris, and drew on in the black-and-white oil painting.
More than 7.5 meters long and 3.5 meters high, “Guernica” was commissioned for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair.
Rosario Peiro, Head of Collections at the Reina Sofia, said that while researching she had seen a photograph of an image of “Guernica” on display in the Syrian town of Aleppo.
“It addresses a system of destruction and terror which sadly is very much a part of our lives,” Peiro said. “It is so hard to fathom — you never really stop thinking about it.”
Versions of the image have been produced at times of conflict in places from Afghanistan to South Carolina, exhibition curator Timothy James Clark says.
“Picasso’s painting seems to live on, indispensably, as a protest against the lie of collateral damage,” he said. “It speaks to the horror of death from the air ... the lived reality of terror bombing.”
The autonomous Basque parliament debated a proposal by separatist party EH Bildu to bring the work to Gernika.
“At a time when it is essential to build a historical memory that recognizes all suffering, the power of this painting and the extent to which it condemns will be multiplied if it is in Gernika on the 80th anniversary,” Bildu said.
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