“El Guernica”. Picasso 80 years after the horror

“El Guernica”. Picasso 80 years after the horror

May 17, 2017

exhibitions

 

 

“El Guernica”, Pablo Picasso, 1937. “Piedad y terror en Picasso. El camino al Guernica”. Exposición en el Museo Reina Sofía

 

The exhibition, which can be seen until September 4, presents a tour of works by the artist from Málaga after 1925, in which scenes of outrageous actions can be seen, where violence and horror are very present. This is intended to reflect on how previous artistic research could have had a significant influence on the creation of Guernica.

 

 

Pablo Picasso. Woman Dressing Her Hair, Royan, 1940. Óleo sobre lienzo. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Louis Reinhardt Smith Bequest, 1995. © 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/ Scala Florence. © Sucessión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2017

 

 

"Piedad y terror en Picasso. El camino al Guernica”, curated by Timothy J. Clark and Anne M. Wagner, collect more than 180 of the artist's greatest works, from the Reina Sofía Museum collection and over 30 Institutions around the world such as the Musée Picasso and the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, the MOMA and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Beyeler Foundation (Basel), and some private collections such as Claude Ruiz-Picasso, Nahmad or Menil.

 

 

Vistas de sala. Piedad y terror en Picasso. El camino a Guernica, 2017

 

 

The tour of the exhibition begins and ends in a room with documentation and references about the viewer to the fatality of the Civil War. Several spaces are dedicated to preparatory sketches and notes, some of them very violent load, like “La muerte de Marat” and “Retrato de la marquesa de culo cristiano echándole un duro a los soldados moros defensores de la virgen” (1937). As a centerpiece of the exhibition is majestic and solemn, which can be considered one of the most celebrated works of art of the twentieth century and probably "the work of the twentieth century that has generated more interpretations," remarks Manuel Borja-Villel, Director Of the Reina Sofía Museum: "El Guernica".

 

 

“Piedad y terror en Picasso. El camino al Guernica”, vista de la exposición. 

 

 

The Reina Sofia Museum has created the Guernica Documentary Fund, an archive curated by Rosario Peiró and Rocío Robles Tardío which compiles historical documentation on the work. The exhibition can be seen until September 4 in the Sabatini Building and there is a conference program entitled “Devenir Guernica. Lecturas sobre guerra, exilio e iconoclastia”, to reflect about the art work.

 

 

 

 

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The CEART opens this Thursday, November 14th in the room A an exhibition dedicated to this master of photography, which will be open to the public until February 9th. The show includes one of the artist's latest projects, focused on the hard work carried out by the miners of Serra Pelada, an open gold mine in the heart of Brazil where employees daily risked their lives.

Immigration, poverty, marginal life, slave labour, man's relationship with the land, the use of natural resources... are issues that have always fascinated Salgado. From the beginning of his career as a photographer, his work has opted to give visibility to the most disadvantaged groups and to create with his images a vivid and impressive visual story without fakes. With a raw black and white, this author's work transits between photo-reportage and naturalistic photography.

And the idea that permeates all his work is human dignity. Salgado portrays employees, miners and gatherers from a purely humanistic approach that wants to value their integrity, their strength and their resilience.

“If you photograph a human, so that he is not represented in a noble way, there is no reason to take the picture. That is my way of seeing things.”

Salgado entered this discipline long after completing his studies in economics between Brazil and the United States, and a doctorate in statistics in France. But in 1973 his life took a turn, and he decided to start his career as a photographer. He achieved to work at the Gamma Agency and Magnum Photos for more than 15 years until in 1994 he founded his own agency “Amazonas Imagen”.

With the “Gold” project, the photographer portrays a harsh reality that takes place in the Serra Pelada mine, a name given to a totally devastated and anarchically excavated mining enclave, the world's largest open-pit gold mine, through which more than 50,000 people have passed. In the heat of the legends about the mysterious “El Dorado”, the enthusiasm for this precious metal led to the development of strenuous exploitation practices for the workers and to originate tales of grief and glory, of human victory and defeat between the soil, the tunnels and the cargo baskets.

The CEART exhibition brings together Salgado's full portfolio in his characteristical black and white and large-format photographs that leave no one indifferent.

 

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