Guernica as an example of links between art and politics. Picasso and the Spanish Civil War

Picasso’s Guernica, commissioned by the Republican government in 1937 for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair, is among the most famous artworks of the twentieth century. The massacre committed by the Nazis in the small Basque town prompted Picasso to start his picture. The Guernica working group wanted “to reconstruct the context in which the work was made, that has been obscured by its formal-aesthetic reception, in a single-work exhibition” and the show proved such a success that it travelled to many other cities in West Germany after its debut at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste. The members of the working group aimed to rework existing materials with educational factors in mind, addressing teachers and students in particular. In addition to the catalogue, that reproduces the exhibition is photographs with supplementary documents and essays, a set of slides for use in schools was also produced.

A second edition was published in 1980 by Elefanten Press Verlag in West Berlin.

Ed.: nGbK

Work group: Manfred Bardutzky, Hanna Gagel, Hortense von Heppe, Diethart Kerbs, Heike Kraft, Anita Schwandt, Heinz Sterzenbach, Wolfgang Virmond

With contributions by: Georg Eichinger, Jürgen Kramer, Irmgard Neumann, Eckhard Siepmann, Hugh Thomas, Wolfgang Virmond, Bernd Weyergraf u.a.