• Guernica by Picasso at the Museo Reina Sofia


    Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, inspired by Picasso's horror at the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The air raid destroyed the city, killing an estimated 1600 people and injuring many more.

    The huge mural was produced under a commission by the Spanish Republican government to decorate the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris). Picasso said as he worked on the mural:
    "The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death".

    Today, Guernica symbolizes the destructive impact of all war.

    I remember visiting the Musée National Picasso on my first ever visit to Paris. I think some time in 1989.
    It was the first time I was ever in a Museum, not counting the small museum of Sacred Art in Funchal Madeira.
    I got a terrible Headache at the time, not because i did not like the experience on the contrary.
    I loved it, I made the mistake of triyng to see the all Museum in one visit.
    I was not sure at the time if i was going to ever return to Paris.
    Now I try to visit the Picasso Museum everytime i'm in Paris.
    I will visit the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid where Guernica is on display soon.
    Thank you cexhib.
    MMaxi 
     


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