Picasso: The Guernica

Picasso’s Guernica not to Gernika

There are some works of Art whose political and social importance is even greater than the artistic one, and Picasso’s Guernica is certainly one of them. With its tragic denounce of the atrocities committed during the War, the painting is considered by many critics as the best pacifist symbol ever created.

Now, 70 years after the bombing that inspire Picasso’s painting, the Basque Government has made a petition to the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in order to get the painting on loan and exhibit it in the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, close to the town of Gernika, a village whose town council has also made a petition to obtain the loan of Guernica’s sketches now in the Reina Sofía. But while the petition made by Gernika’s council has been accepted, the Reina Sofía has declared that the colossal painting will never left Madrid given the possible risks while moving the picture to Bilbao .

This negative has not been well received by the Basque Government, who has reminded Reina Sofía’s director that the Spanish Culture Department approved few months ago the loan of the Lady of Elche , the masterwork of the Iberian Art, to the town of Elche.

The debate is now open, and it’s quite possibly that both parts are partially wrong. First of all, we cannot compare the “Lady of Elche” , a sculpture created in Elche, with the Guernic , a work that was not created in Gernika. But it’s also quite ridiculous to suggest the impossibility of moving the picture from Madrid to Bilbao -a distance of only 500 km- without enough security. Remember that nine years ago, the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao demonstrated that the painting could easily be introduced in a specific truck case, aisled from any vibration or temperature variation.