Date: Monday 24th February 10:30
Location: Salón de Actos, Espai la Senieta, Moraira (next to the large free car park)
Subject: Guernica: The atrocity and the painting
Lecturer: Peter Atkinson
Free entrance
On the 26th of April, 1937, German and Italian aircraft bombed the Basque town of Gernika at Franco’s request, with the objective of killing civilians. Such tactics would soon become a routine part of warfare but in 1937 the world was horrified. Within two months, Pablo Picasso, in exile in Paris, had completed “Guernica”. At nearly 30m² it is a huge painting, in black, white and grey, a powerful statement of the horrors of war and one of the world’s most recognisable works of art.
The lecture will explore the painting’s evolution during its short gestation period, its symbolism and its emergence as an anti-war icon. We shall also follow the itinerant life of the painting from its initial showing in Paris in 1937 to its Spanish homecoming in 1981 and its 1992 transfer from the Prado to the Reina Sofia museum of contemporary art in Madrid.
