![]() After years of negotiations, MoMA restored Guernica to Spain in 1981, where it was housed in the Casón del Buen Retiro, an annex of the Prado Museum in Madrid. Picasso died in 1973, two years before Franco and never witnessed the painting’s return to Spain. ![]() As the painting traveled, it grew in fame, inciting heated debate on Picasso’s art and literary sources, working process, and the symbolism of its subjects, among other topics. Picasso vehemently refused to allow the painting to reside in Spain while Franco ruled, declaring that “the painting will be turned over to the government of the Spanish Republic the day the Republic is restored in Spain!” Thus began the painting’s long exile.įearing the Nazi occupation of France, Picasso loaned Guernica to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, which toured the painting throughout the United States and elsewhere for nearly 20 years after. In 1939, however, they conceded to the Nationalists. When the world’s fair ended, the Spanish Republic toured Guernica throughout Scandinavia and England to raise awareness and funds for their cause. Whether it was successful as a political statement became a debate among scholars. Although clear as an emotional response to war’s senseless violence, the painting, with its mismatched subjects, confounded world’s fair viewers. Picasso said very little about the painting’s meaning, leaving interpretation to viewers, critics, and art historians. The dramatic subject is subdued, painted in the grisaille technique, a method using a neutral monochrome palette. Farther back, flames and possibly ruins consume a howling figure. A ghostly figure emerges from an opening to the right, holding a gaslight, while a woman closer to the foreground hangs her arms in despair. A bellowing bull on the left seems to encompass a wailing mother with her child laying slack in her arms. A braying horse occupies the painting’s centre, stumbling over its fallen rider sprawled below and lit by the spiked rays of a light bulb above. The complex composition, with Picasso’s characteristic Cubist figures and disquieting representation of space, was not easy to read. How much do you know about the visual arts? You’ll need to know your Monet from your Manet-and a whole lot more-to make it through these questions from some of Britannica’s most popular quizzes.ĭisplayed near the entrance of the Republican’s pavilion, Guernica was the first thing many visitors saw. Coverage of the devastation set Picasso to work on the commission, and he completed the enormous painting (11.5 × 25.5 feet ) in about three weeks. The three-hour long blitzkrieg nearly annihilated the city and killed or wounded one-third of the population. Several months later, German aircraft, at the request of the Nationalists, heavily bombed the city of Guernica on April 26. Picasso, who rarely mixed politics and art, accepted. Spain was six months into its civil war-a military revolt undertaken by the Nationalists against the government-and the Republicans saw the international event as an opportunity to assert its legitimacy and to condemn the brutal tactics of Gen. Picasso was living in Paris when the Spanish Republican government approached him in 1937 with a commission to produce a mural for their pavilion in that year’s world’s fair. Guernica, oil on canvas by Pablo Picasso, 1937 in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
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