Rethinking Guernica

While some museums are closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibitions will include shows at institutions that are currently open as well as digital projects providing virtual access to art and culture.

Picasso’s Guernica (1937) is among the most stinging visual protests against the horrors of war. In 2017 the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid launched ‘Rethinking Guernica’, an interactive digital resource that offers multiple routes through the vast body of research that has been conducted on the painting – from documentation of the creation of the work and its initial reception to the many interpretations it has since accrued. Gigapixel photography enables viewers to explore the canvas up close in normal light, ultraviolet, infrared and X-Ray. This month the museum announced that the resource has been upgraded and expanded, with the addition of more than 200 documents, as well as two new sections: ‘Oral History’ (which includes video interviews with Claude Picasso, the artist’s son, and Roland Dumas, the executor of his will) and ‘(Im)Possible Counter-Archives’, which presents new research into the painting’s influence on anti-war activism. Explore the ‘Rethinking Guernica’ website here.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here

Picasso working on Guernica in his studio at Grands-Augustins, Paris (1937), Dora Maar. © Dora Maar/VEGAP, Madrid, 2021

Article by Georges Sadoul published in Regards, 29 July 1937, from Picasso’s private archives. Photo: © RMN-Grand Palais (musée national Picasso-Paris)

Screenshot from the ‘(Im)Possible Counter-Archives’ page of the ‘Rethinking Guernica’ website

Guernica (1937), Pablo Picasso. © Succession Pablo Picasso/VEGAP, Madrid, 2021