MADRID - Guernica, the moving Picasso masterpiece depicting the horrors of war, continues to raise as many hackles today as it did when it was first painted 60 years ago, writes Jane Walker. While angry voices could be heard in Madrid, there were cheers of delight in Bilbao after the Spanish Parliament voted yesterday to authorise the temporary loan of the work to the Basque city "so long as its safety and technical integrity can be guaranteed".
The directors of the Guggenheim Foundation in Bilbao had requested Guernica for the inauguration of its multimillion dollar museum next October. After all, they point out, Picasso was inspired to paint the work as a homage to the civilian victims of the Nazi bombing which virtually destroyed the Basque town of Guernica in 1937.
Throughout the Franco dictatorship the painting hung in New York's museum of Modern Art, and it only came to Spain in 1981. The painting now hangs in the Reina Sofia Museum of 20th Century Art in Madrid, but it is in poor condition. Last month, when the Reina Sofia curators turned down the Guggenheim request, alleging the canvas was too fragile to travel, the decision became a political rather than an artistic one.
The museum distributed Xray photographs showing cracking paint and peeling canvas. At the same time, the Basques produced their own panel of experts who claimed that careful transportation from Madrid to Bilbao would cause no problems, but Mr Fernando Checa, the director of the Prado Museum, declared that any move would be "a scandal."