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Museum Honors 75th Anniversary Of Picasso's 'Guernica' With Special Exhibit
It's Picasso's most famous and discussed work. "Guernica" was the artist's response to the Luftwaffe's bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Some 1,654 civilians died. Nazi Germany was supporting General Francisco Franco and his Nationalists in their attempt to overthrow the Republican government, a fight he eventually won.
Now the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, which houses the work, is honoring its 75th anniversary with a new exhibition titled "Encounters with the 1930s." This show examines the crucial decade through its art, looking at the various artistic movements and how they grappled with the increasingly polarized political landscape of Europe.
More than 400 exhibits are divided into six sections: realism; abstraction; international expositions; surrealism; photography, film and posters; and Spain: the Second Republic, the Civil War and exile. The museum is also hosting a film series titled "Cinema of the 1930s."
This exhibition comes at a time when the old divisions from the Spanish Civil War are beginning to reemerge. This excellent article on the BBC goes into more detail.
"Encounters with the 1930s" runs from October 3-January 7, 2013.
[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]
Filed under: Arts and Culture, History, Learning, Spain
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Koldo Oct 4th 2012 6:56PM
The Picasso sketchbooks for the (hideous) 'Guernica' painting are on display in the Prado Museum in Madrid or the museum next door to it. The first sketches for the famous painting are made in his 1936 sketchbook. The Spanish civil war did not start until that summer, and Guernica was bombed in April 1937, so to my untrained eye it is clearly a bullfight depiction.
Thank you.