At MAN in Nuoro, the exhibition on the genesis of Picasso's Guernica, an anthem against war

Seventy years after Pablo Picasso ’s historic exhibition of Guernica at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, in a celebrated show held in 1953, the MAN in Nuoro intends to pay tribute to a work that is a witness to its era, but carries a universal message that is still tragically relevant today. A hymn against the horror of all wars. The exhibition also celebrates the first Picasso exhibition that saw the complete series of the Vollard Suite presented 20 years ago at the MAN in Nuoro, in collaboration with the Reina Sofía in Madrid, also a partner in this important new project.

Guernica was exhibited in the Sala delle Cariatidi of the Palazzo Reale from September 23 to December 31, 1953, along with more than three hundred other works by the Spanish master, shaping the largest Picasso retrospective ever held in Italy. Later the exhibition was moved to Rome, but in a reduced format and especially without Guernica, which has not returned to Italy since. The Sala delle Cariatidi, which at the time of hosting Picasso’s masterpiece still showed signs of World War II bombing, thus amplifying the work’s significance, also hosted on that occasion other dramatic compositions of explicit denunciation of the disasters of war such as Massacre in Korea and Carnaio.

Today Guernica no longer travels, never leaving Spain or its room at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. Nor will it ever return to Paris, where it was created, commissioned by the Spanish Republican government for the 1937 World’s Fair,nor to MoMA in New York where it spent much of its exile before returning home. And he will certainly never return to Italy.

Seventy years after the historic exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, MAN in Nuoro, from Nov. 18, 2022 to Jan. 19, 2023, celebrates the Italian passage of Guernica, symbolically and artistically fundamental for a generation of artists, art critics and Italian citizens. The Nuoro tribute, entitled Picasso and Guernica. Genesis of a Masterpiece. Against All Wars, is divided into two main sections: the echoes of Guernica in Picasso’s artistic production and the narrative of the work’s genesis through the visual narrative of Dora Maar, photographer and at the time companion of the Spanish artist.

The first section finds its main focus in the extraordinary diptych of engravings entitled Sueño y mentira de Franco, a graphic counterbalance to the large painting. Picasso began engraving the first plate in January 1937 but soon abandoned the work. In May, just after the tragic bombing of the Basque town, he completed both plates just as he was executing the monumental canvas, using the same studies and ideas. This is not, however, a scaled-down version of the painting, but an original invention in its own right, drawing on the same thought and creative impetus. Gathered around Sueño y mentira de Franco will be a small but significant series of engravings, which either directly pertain to the gestation of Guernica or, because they were made during the same period, closely recall the style and themes of the famous painting.

The second core of the exhibition will revolve around the extraordinary testimony of Dora Maar, who documented Picasso’s work day by day with her own photographs. This is a series of shots at once moving and fundamental to the philological reconstruction of the creation of Guernica. Along with the photographs, the splendid engraving Portrait de Dora Maar au chignon, executed by Picasso in 1936 just a year after Guernica and which in some ways reverberates the synthetic style of Guernica, will be on display. There will be no shortage of images taken in 1953 by Mario Perotti on the occasion of the Milan exhibition, in the touching setting of the Sala delle Cariatidi marked by the bombings, a tragic situation that convinced Picasso to exhibit his masterpiece in that context so akin to the painting’s soul.

Interlinea catalog, Italian-English, with texts by Michele Tavola, Gioxe De Micheli, Victoria Combalía, Jean-Louis Andral, annotated bibliography on Guernica edited by Erica Rompani.

At MAN in Nuoro, the exhibition on the genesis of Picasso's Guernica, an anthem against war

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