Museo Reina Sofía: Guernica Comes Home
Why is it significant?
Face the long granite front of the Museo Reina Sofía and its glass lift towers, which run up the old walls like two transparent ladders. This was once the General Hospital of Madrid, begun in the reign of Charles III. Today it guards the most famous painting of the twentieth century about war.
Key Facts
| Place | Museo Reina Sofía: Guernica Comes Home |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle de Santa Isabel 52, 28012 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.40800, -3.69430 |
| Part of Walk | Avenue of Shells: Madrid Under Siege and the Road to Democracy |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the long granite front of the Museo Reina Sofía and its glass lift towers, which run up the old walls like two transparent ladders. This was once the General Hospital of Madrid, begun in the reign of Charles III. Today it guards the most famous painting of the twentieth century about war.
On 26 April 1937, aircraft of Germany's Condor Legion, with Italian planes, bombed the Basque town of Guernica on a market day. In Paris, Pablo Picasso had been commissioned by the Spanish Republic to paint a mural for its pavilion at that year's International Exposition. He threw out his first ideas and in a few weeks painted Guernica: almost eight metres of black, white and grey, a screaming horse, a bull, a mother with a dead child, a lamp, a broken sword.
Then the painting went on a long exile. It toured to raise money for Spanish refugees and ended up in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Picasso declared that it should return to Spain only when the country had democratic liberties again. He died in 1973, two years before Franco. The canvas finally arrived in Madrid on 10 September 1981, a few months after the failed coup, and was first shown in the Casón del Buen Retiro behind bulletproof glass. In 1992 it moved to this building, where it has stayed.
There is a famous story, perhaps too perfect to be true, that during the German occupation of Paris an officer looked at a photograph of Guernica in Picasso's studio and asked: did you do this? And Picasso answered: no... you did.
For many Spaniards, the painting's arrival was a sign that the transition was real: the last exile of the war had come home. Inside, it hangs with Picasso's preparatory studies displayed nearby, so you can watch the horse's scream take shape. From the museum, cross the busy roundabout to the old railway station with the great iron roof.