It is now 25 years since Pablo Picasso’s Guernica returned to Spain from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, where it had been conserved until political freedom was re-established in this country (at which point the painting was to be returned to the Spanish people thus carrying out the artist’s wishes). To commemorate this cultural event, one of the most relevant in Spain’s recent history and an eloquent symbol of its new democratic freedom, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Museo Nacional del Prado are jointly organizing the exhibition Picasso. Tradición y vanguardia (“Picasso. Tradition and Avant-garde”).

Held simultaneously in both museums and with the historical perspective that is possible today, the exhibition makes a journey through Pablo Picasso’s career, reflecting how this brilliant artist from Malaga built up his modern identity through continual dialogue with the old masters, in a clear dialectic tension with tradition. At the Prado Museum, a dialogue is established with the great artists of the collection -whom Picasso admired in his youth and whom he evoked with his personal language to reflect on the construction of the painter’s eye. The section of the exhibition at the Reina Sofía Museum lays emphasis on the artist’s moral commitment to reality, focusing on the greatness of Guernica, not only as a work that brings together the main elements of Picasso’s artistic development -classical, cubist and surrealist, but also as a universal icon par excellence that condemns every war that occurrs.

The celebration at the Reina Sofía has acquired its own extraordinary significance, as this is the institution that houses this exceptional work, the axis that articulates and gives meaning to the whole collection.

Commissioned by the Spanish Republican Government, Picasso was to create a great mural (which the artist would call Guernica) for their Pavilion, to be constructed at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair (Exposition Internationale des Arts et des Techniques dans la Vie Moderne) and designed on this occasion to bear witness to the tragic situation in Spain then laid waste by a civil war (1936-39).

From 1st May to 4th June 1937, Picasso dedicated his time and energy to producing this monumental painting. During the first six days, he carried out a series of preparatory works. However, the inspiration for the final composition derived from the news of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by the German airforce, which was collaborating with Franco’s troops. Picasso learnt about the attack from the tragic pictures published in the French newspaper L'Humanité. Conceived as a gigantic poster, Guernica is an indictment of the horror of the Spanish Civil War -and indeed of any other war- from the point of view of the suffering of the victims, and, moreover a fundamental work in 20th century art.

In the main hall of the Permanent Collection where Picasso’s production is on display, two works face each other to establish the main axis of the exhibition: Guernica and Francisco de Goya’s emblematic El 3 de mayo de 1808 en Madrid. Los fusilamientos en la montaña del Príncipe Pío (“May 3rd 1808”, 1814). A fruitful dialogue is thereby generated between two of the most powerful images in universal iconography which show the suffering of innocent people in warlike conflicts. Moreover, two similar and definitive attitudes of the modern artist, embodied by both Goya and Picasso. It was a relationship that Picasso assumed in a dynamic and dialectic manner in his look at the Spanish pictorial tradition.

An equally exceptional second axis is formed from the above work by Goya, Edward Manet’s La ejecución de Maximiliano (“The Execution of Maximilian”, 1868-1869) -on show thanks to the generosity of the Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim- and Masacre en Corea (“Massacre in Korea”, 1951) by Picasso -on loan from the Musée Picasso, Paris. The criss-crossing gaze of these three artists, the formal parallelism in the resolution of the composition, the similar theme and each artist’s social commitment, turn this axis into a kind of genealogy of modernity marked by a new way for the artist to approach the historical event.

Alongside these works, the entire collection of paintings and drawings that make up the Guernica legacy unfolds: the sketches and preparatory studies for Guernica, as well as the “postscripts” -works Picasso continued to produce after the great canvas was completed and which relate to the Guernica theme. These include the group of “crying women” that belong to the Museum, and which, with Monumento a los españoles muertos por Francia (“Monument to the Spaniards who died for France”, 1946-47, and also from the collection), and a particularly relevant work, El Osario (“The Charnel House”, 1945, MoMA, New York) evoking the horror of the concentration camps, link up both iconographically and stylistically with Guernica to complete the representation of Pablo Picasso’s strong condemnation of the horrors of modern warfare. To this group of works three prints of great significance in this context are added: Sueño y mentira de Franco I y II (“Dream and Lie of Franco I and II”) and Minotauromaquia, in which some of the themes developed in Guernica are anticipated.

Moreover, to introduce a vitalistic and hopeful note -which characterized Picasso’s career as well as the existential audacity of those works denouncing the violence of war- the exhibition also contains some of Pablo Picasso’s most significant works from an artistic, conceptual, and historical point of view. They all belong to the Reina Sofía Museum holdings and fall within the same time span as Guernica: three of the most outstanding sculptures -La mujer en el jardín (“Woman in the Garden”, 1929-30), Dama oferente (“Offering Lady”, 1934), and El hombre del cordero (“Man with a Lamb”, 1943); and two excellent paintings -La nadadora (“The Swimmer”,1934), and Mujer sentada en un sillón gris (“Woman sitting in a grey armchair”,1939).

Offering Lady

Man with a Lamb

El 3 de mayo de 1808 en Madrid. Los fusilamientos en la montaña del Príncipe Pío

Massacre in Korea