The "la Caixa" Foundation and the Reina Sofía Museum present 'Picasso. The Journey of Guernica' in Ciudad Real

The mayoress of Ciudad Real, Eva María Masías; the director of the Institutions Centre of CaixaBank in Ciudad Real, Reyes Agudo; the delegate of the "la Caixa" Foundation in Castilla-La Mancha, Rosa Gómez; and the exhibition advisor, Manuela Pedrón; inaugurated the project 'Picasso. The Journey of Guernica'.

As part of its cultural programme, the "la Caixa" Foundation pays special attention to the art of the last century. Through its exhibitions on modern and contemporary art, the institution aims to show its influence on contemporary sensitivity and highlight the role of the great visual creators of the 20th century in our way of seeing the world. To this end, it has organised exhibitions dedicated to some of the great names in the history of painting in the last century, such as Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol.

Pablo Picasso now joins them, coinciding with the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Guernica. Organised by the "la Caixa" Foundation together with the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and in collaboration with the Ciudad Real City Council, this new and innovative travelling exhibition project will offer a journey in which visitors can travel through the history of the 20th century alongside one of its most emblematic works. The exhibition has been produced inside two trailers which, joined together, form a 200 square metre exhibition hall. The mobility of the exhibition will allow it to travel throughout Spain over the next few years, bringing the history of the iconic painting to cities all over Spain.

'Picasso. The Journey of Guernica' offers a historical tour of Picasso's work from its creation in Paris in 1937 to its permanent location at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 1992. Visitors will be able to discover the creative process that the famous Spanish artist undertook to create his work, as well as its significance as an anti-war denunciation and the reasons why the work travelled around the world for more than forty years.

The different exhibition spaces and resources of the exhibition reveal the historical context of the period, as well as the keys to understanding the importance and significance of 'Guernica'. The exhibition includes audiovisuals, reproductions of photographs and posters from the period, and facsimiles of documents and drawings that aim to explain the history of the creation and travels of one of the most representative works of the most important artist of the 20th century.

'Picasso. The Journey of Guernica' is divided into five areas that review the journey of the work in its different phases, as well as important moments in Picasso's life that were decisive in the creation of the painting. The "la Caixa" Foundation has produced several audiovisual pieces that help to understand the history of Guernica and its influence. Of particular note is the audiovisual work by the artist Rogelio López Cuenca and two other newly produced audiovisuals about the historical context of 'Guernica', the technical characteristics of the work and the damage caused by the painting's displacement and its restoration.

In January 1937, the government of the Second Spanish Republic commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint a picture for the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris that same year. Despite his initial reluctance, Picasso accepted the commission, but did not begin painting immediately. On 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the German and Italian air forces bombed the town of Gernika-Lumo in favour of the rebel side. Picasso learned of this bombing through the graphic press, specifically the newspapers L'Humanité and Ce Soir. The images and the account of the war episode acted as an incentive for the artist to undertake definitively the work that the government of the Second Republic had commissioned from him. The creation of Guernica took just five weeks, and its creation process can be documented in the exhibition through the photographs of Dora Maar, with whom he was romantically involved at the time.

'Guernica' was Picasso's response to a commission from the government of the Second Spanish Republic, in the midst of the Civil War and with clear anti-war denunciations. Political circumstances prevented the painting from reaching Spain until 1981. Over the course of forty-four years, the work was presented in different cities in Europe and America: first, as an element of propaganda in favour of the Republic and aid to refugees during the Civil War, and, later, as a fundamental piece in the construction of the story of modern art and the reconstruction of a new geopolitical order after the Second World War.

The Spanish Civil War broke out on 18 July 1936. The bombing of the Basque town of Gernika-Lumo by the German Condor Legion on 26 April 1937 was one of its most dramatic events: a systematic, experimental bombing operation that claimed more than a hundred victims. The repercussions in the Republican and international press were immediate. The newspapers were filled with spectral images of the city in ruins, of women and children, headlines with cries for help and references to the plight of the refugees.

Picasso learned of the bombing of Gernika-Lumo through the graphic press, specifically the newspapers L'Humanité and Ce Soir. The images and the account of the episode of the war acted as a reaction for the artist to undertake definitively the work that the government of the Second Republic had commissioned from him. The themes that had been haunting him for some time - the painter and the model - were articulated around a central idea: terror and pain in the face of a demonstration of maximum violence.

The Artist, the Studio, the Commission

Picasso rented a studio in the rue des Grands-Augustins in Paris in order to have a larger working space and to carry out the commission. After the bombing of Gernika-Lumo, he began a process in which he simultaneously tackled the motifs of his work both in drawings and compositions on paper and on the large canvas.

He made 45 preparatory sketches with the themes, the figures (the bull, the horse, the mother with the dead child, the weeping woman's head, the hand with the broken sword) and the spatial definition. He used various techniques (pencil, charcoal, gouache, oil). Starting from elements of his personal mythology (the self-portrait as a Minotaur, the sacrificed horses of bullfights), Picasso turned to aspects of tragedy, using allegory: universal values outside historical time.

Dora Maar's testimony

Picasso took just five weeks to paint 'Guernica'. Dora Maar (1907-1997), the artist with whom he was romantically involved at the time, photographed the various stages of the painting, both in the drawings and on the canvas. The studio in rue des Grands-Augustins was a small space with large windows: the canvas was fitted between the floor and the ceiling beams. The photographs of Dora Maar also bear witness to the visits of friends such as the writer André Breton and the painter Jacqueline Lamba.

The composition of the painting follows a pyramidal and balanced scheme; the figures are gathered in the foreground, where everything happens. The static image, with a masterly mastery of theatrical effects, underlines the timeless scope of the work.

The Spanish Republic at the International Exhibition in Paris

The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris opened its doors on 25 May 1937. At a time of maximum pre-war tension, one of the slogans of the exhibition was to work for peace and understanding between peoples. Just a few metres apart, the pavilions of the Soviet Union and Germany contradicted this pacifist discourse: the two grandiloquent pavilions metaphorically imposed themselves on the map of the world.

The architects Josep Lluís Sert and Luis Lacasa, faithful to the principles of the modern architectural movement, devised a pavilion modest in materials and scale, three storeys high: an anti-monumental building. Josep Renau, director general of Fine Arts, devised the entire programme, giving great prominence to photomontages and turning it into an effective propaganda machine. The interior was organised around three main themes: the plastic arts, folklore and popular arts, and the government programme and the achievements of the Republic. The war was the dominant theme of the works, created especially for the occasion by a series of invited artists such as Pablo Picasso, Julio González and Joan Miró, who were internationally renowned.

'Guernica' was installed on the ground floor, opposite Mercury Fountain by the American Alexander Calder. The courtyard was used as an agora, where lectures, film screenings, performances and concerts were held.

After the closing of the Paris exhibition on 25 November 1937, 'Guernica' began a worldwide tour as a work of art and as a political propaganda appeal.

Its first trip, in the spring of 1938, was to Scandinavia. It was a travelling exhibition of works by Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Laurens, organised by the Norwegian artist Walter Halvorsen, with the collaboration of the gallery owner Paul Rosenberg. On his return, the painting was given to Picasso, who agreed to put it to the greatest artistic and political use.

In September 1938, as part of the activities of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief, Guernica and its drawings travelled to England. Picasso was personally involved in the campaign, and the painting was exhibited in several cities. The leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, presented the exhibition 'Guernica. Pictures by Picasso' at the Whitechapel in London (January 1939), as a clear manifestation of anti-fascist struggle.

For the third tour, the painting crossed the Atlantic. Promoted by the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign, an exhibition opened in a New York gallery in May 1939, and from there it travelled to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. By then, the Civil War had ended with Franco's victory, so the circumstances were not right for the painting to be returned to the Spanish people.

The tour of 'Guernica' and its drawings in the United States, organised by the Spanish Refugee Aid Campaign, was an appeal to the relationship between art and politics and to the position taken by the artists.

This did not prevent Alfred H. Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), from presenting a major retrospective exhibition: Picasso: Forty Years of His Art, an exercise in study and systematisation that marked Picasso art, criticism and historiography in the years that followed. Guernica was presented as the culmination of a career that had begun forty years earlier. The exhibition was a success, with more than 60,000 visitors and great media coverage.

Taking advantage of the context of war in Europe, Barr, who intended to turn MoMA into a world art reference with the largest Picasso collection in the world, urged the artist to deposit Guernica in the museum so that it would remain in New York.

A few years later, while Spain was experiencing the repression of Franco's regime, Picasso declared that the painting would remain at MoMA until the Spanish people regained the freedoms that had been taken away from them.

Tours in the United States

From 1940 onwards, 'Guernica' travelled from MoMA to various cities in the United States. In this way, Barr consolidated the museum's role as a pedagogical authority and turned the painting into an image and a subject for the media and the consumer press. The installation of Guernica at Harvard University's Fogg Museum in the autumn of 1941 highlights the process of sacralisation and resignification to which it was subjected. Guernica was presented as an image of a desacralised modern altar. In the midst of the Second World War, Picasso's work was being set up as an image of peace.

Almost thirty years later, in January 1970, a group of anti-Vietnam war activists staged a protest action in front of Guernica. In the same war context, on 28 February 1974, the artist and member of the Art Workers' Coalition, Tony Shafrazi, attacked the painting, writing "Kill Lies All" on its surface.

In the years that followed, MoMA organised numerous exhibitions devoted to Picasso that always included Guernica. Most notably in the summer of 1980, a major retrospective that served as a farewell to the painting, whose success and expectation were greater than ever.

Interpretations of the painting

Picasso's affiliation to the French Communist Party in early October 1944 - two months after the liberation of Paris - the approaching celebration of the tenth anniversary of Guernica, as well as the publication of the monograph dedicated to it by Juan Larrea, unleashed great interest in the work and, in particular, in Picasso's own explanations of its symbolism.

Alfred H. Barr set out from MoMA to help clarify the painting's meaning, and to this end organised a symposium on 25 November 1947, bringing together experts and witnesses to the painting's creation, such as Juan Larrea, Josep Lluís Sert and the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.

In addition to Larrea, several authors pointed out influences from the art of the past recognisable in Guernica - from cave paintings, beati and Romanesque paintings to Goya and Manet - creating a genealogy of forms and iconographies from the history of art.

In January 1947 Ad Reinhardt's graphic vignette 'How to Look at a Mural: Guernica' was published, a guide to the painting through graphic satire that pointed out the historical context, the value of the symbols and the meaning of each one of them: the use of black and white, the tension between the horse and the bull, and the expressive force of the mutilated hand, head and arm. In short, more than a poster or a cartoon, Guernica synthesised a whole period of ruptures and reordering of balances, both artistic and political.

The ''Guernica'' returns to Europe and travels to Sao Paulo

In the post-war period, the world was divided into two great blocs. It was an undeclared confrontation, based on multiple threats and tactical moves to expand the respective areas of influence. In both blocs, and on a global level, there was an underlying fear of a nuclear war with unimaginable consequences.

The dove drawn by Picasso in 1949 was the symbol of the World Congress of the Supporters of Peace, held in Paris that same year, which had an international circulation that was not without its critics. The French Anti-Communist movement Peace and Freedom published a poster in which Yossif Stalin was shown carrying Picasso's dove tied to him as if it were a mascot.

The work and the figure of Picasso were at the centre of the controversy. After the presence of Guernica in Milan in 1953 and its participation in the 2nd São Paulo Biennial (1953-54), the painting returned to Europe in 1955, on the occasion of the anthological exhibition devoted to it at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. This exhibition subsequently travelled to Munich, Cologne and Hamburg. Guernica's presence in these cities had a twofold purpose: to disseminate the work and the figure of Picasso as a committed artist, and to appeal to efforts to reconstruct and overcome the memory of the war and the bombings. Guernica and its drawings were later exhibited in Brussels, Amsterdam and Stockholm. This marked the end of an extensive tour, reflecting a new idea of Europe.

In Spain, 'Guernica' was the symbol of lost liberties. In the 1960s, there was a timid campaign, from the university and the government, calling for the painting to be handed over, which was inconsistent with the reality of the dictatorship.

It was not until after Franco's death that steps were officially taken in this regard. The government of Adolfo Suárez made it a priority, with the support of the opposition. To this end, it was necessary to work along two lines: to offer proof of the degree of freedom and democracy that existed in Spain, and to clarify the question of the ownership of the painting and its handover from Picasso to the Spanish people. The letter from Max Aub to Luis Araquistáin dated 28 May 1937, which stated the amount paid to Picasso and which could constitute proof of the acquisition of the work by the government, was one of the decisive documents for the MoMA to accept its transfer.

Guernica arrived in Spain on 10 September 1981, surrounded by enormous expectation. The arrival of Guernica in Madrid was presented by the government as a sign of reconciliation between the two sides of the Civil War and the end of the transition. As the press pointed out, "the last exile" was returning.

'Guernica' in the Casón del Buen Retiro, Madrid, (1981-1992)

The first site of 'Guernica' was the Casón, the former ballroom of the Buen Retiro Palace, which was declared a ruin in 1814 after the French invasion. Once the restoration work had been completed, it became a museum attached to the Museo Nacional del Prado.

The painting had travelled by plane, rolled up and surrounded by exceptional security measures, which were also maintained in its new location. It was installed in a large, armoured glass urn, in a room permanently guarded by Guardia Civil officers. It was a very unusual setting for a work of art, and the photographers took great pleasure in showing it in images which, over the years, testify to the fragility of the transition and the extraordinary caution with which the presentation of Picasso's work to the public was organised.

The exhibition 'Guernica. Picasso Legacy', which, in addition to the painting, presented the 45 works associated with it (understood as an inseparable whole), was a great success, with thousands of visitors.

Museo Reina Sofía: 'Guernica' "re-historicised"

The transfer of 'Guernica' and its associated works from the Casón del Buen Retiro to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía entered the national political agenda in 1986, following the creation of the new art centre, the complete refurbishment of the building and the planning of its collection at the end of 1988.

The movement of the Picasso works took place on Sunday 26 July 1992. On that occasion, for conservation reasons, the painting was not rolled up again.

Guernica was installed on the first floor of the museum, in a unique space, and in the adjoining rooms the preparatory drawings and canvases, as well as the postscripts, were displayed. In November 1996, the painting was moved to the first floor.

In recent years, the various installations in the rooms around Guernica, as well as the temporary exhibitions devised within this framework, have shown the plurality, frictions and commonalities of artistic practices which, in the midst of the war, the crisis in art and the politics of the 1930s, contributed to the generation of new national and international disciplinary debates.

The ''Guernica'' is a universal symbol of freedom that has gone from the museum to the street. It appears wherever there is an episode of violence against the civilian population. Progressively, the painting has become an icon for peace used recurrently in non-institutional and non-exclusively artistic spheres, such as spaces of protest and collective mobilisations, sometimes spontaneous and across dispersed geographies (from the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, to the mobilisations against the war in Iraq and, nowadays, in Syria).

The painting appeals to a wide variety of groups: it is the most frequently reproduced work in Spanish prisons, where it evokes lost freedom; it also warns of the horror of war in anti-militarist propaganda and calls for solidarity in the publicity of left-wing groups. Artists have interpreted it from all points of view: as a visual icon, an element of political propaganda and an artistic totem.

This section connects different scenarios in which the image of Guernica has been recovered as a protest against injustice and in favour of peace. To the extent that its status as a history painting has turned it into a universal allegory, Guernica is capable of constantly updating itself and increasing its critical force.