75 years of Picasso's Guernica: An Inconvenient Masterpiece

This year marked the seventieth fifth anniversary of both the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica and the creation of Pablo Picasso's mural depicting the horrors of the unprecedented aerial bombardment against a defenseless civil population of around five thousand. In those years, Guernica has become a universal and powerful symbol warning humanity against the suffering and devastation of war.

Picasso's mural is now also inescapably linked to the US-led war in Iraq. In February 2003, Colin Powel spoke about going to war in Iraq at the United Nations Security Council. There was a press conference scheduled afterwards. A tapestry reproduction of Guernica located outside the entrance of the Council Room was covered with a blue curtain. UN officials claimed the mural was a distracting background for the TV cameras covering the press conference. Its unappealing ménage of mutilated bodies and distorted faces proved to be too strong for articulating to the world why the US was going to war in Iraq. Guernica became an inconvenient masterpiece.

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Alejandro Escalona: 75 years of Picasso's Guernica: An Inconvenient Masterpiece