London Times: Picasso's "Guernica" called to its spiritual home [View All]

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Guernica called to its spiritual home
By Graham Keeley in Barcelona
Picasso work may finally be destined for the region whose suffering it represents

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,285407,00.jpg

GUERNICA, the masterpiece by Pablo Picasso that symbolises the brutality of war, may be exhibited in the Basque Country for the first time. A vote in the culture commission of the upper house of the Spanish parliament approved a motion to return the painting to the region.

Basque nationalists and the main conservative opposition Popular Party formed an unlikely alliance to ask the Socialist Government to approve at least a temporary exhibition of the famous work in the Basque Country.

After the recent declaration of a permanent ceasefire by Eta, the Basque separatist organisation, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister, is likely to feel that a symbolic gesture would go a long way to healing old divisions between Madrid and the Basques....

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The painting was inspired by the bombing in 1937 of the unarmed civilian population of the Basque town that gave it its name, by the German Condor Legion squadron that supported General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The carpet bombing of the traditional Basque capital during a busy market day caused an estimated 1,650 deaths and destroyed the town....

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In Spain, Guernica has come to symbolise democracy because Picasso refused to let his masterpiece return to his own country while Franco was in power....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2116997,00.html