The Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid has organized a tour of one of the most important works of the 20th century, Guernica, by Pablo Picasso.
"On April 26, 1937, in the midst of the Spanish civil war, the Basque city of Gernika was bombarded by the German and Italian armies, in support of the side that rebelled against the government of the Second Republic. This fact inspired Pablo Picasso to paint the Guernica painting”. With this brief introduction the proposal begins, based on studies on the work and based on around 2000 documents, digitized and freely accessible to each visitor.
Picasso was summoned by the Embassy of Spain in Paris with the proposal to make a large painting to be exhibited in the Spanish pavilion at the International Exhibition that that city would inaugurate in 1937. We read on the Reina Sofía website: "Guernica was an unprecedented pictorial exercise in the artist's career and the iconic power of the work as an instrument of political propaganda was immediately recognized on the scene of the Civil War”.
A temptation for curious-minded visitors, the proposal advances through the artist's history and especially this painting that for many years was exhibited in eleven cities in Europe and America, until in July 1992 it was installed in the Madrid museum. And on this site it is possible to see where it was exhibited and also, the numerous rejections of loan requests, due to political, security and conservation reasons.
Photographs, videos, interviews, scanned texts, artistic debates and technical studies of the work enrich each chapter even in the most elusive and secret details. Without a doubt, a delight to know the history of a work that was and is iconic, and that from its origin intertwined its artistic qualities with the political reality that gave it origin and inspiration.
We recommend it, and you are one click away from making this trip:
https://guernica.museoreinasofia.es