Guernica
The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon
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- 19,99 €
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- 19,99 €
Descripción editorial
The remarkable story of the famous painting by Picasso and its diverse meanings from its conception to the present day
'Enthralling ... This is high-action drama, told like the rest within a huge frame of reference, theme interlocked with theme ... A painting which began its life within a particular political context has emerged as a universal statement on the ever-present horror and suffering of war. Van Hensbergen has treated an extraordinary subject admirably' Evening Standard
Of all the great paintings in the world, Picasso's Guernica has had a more direct impact on our consciousness than perhaps any other. In this absorbing and revealing book, Gijs van Hensbergen tells the story of this masterpiece.
Starting with its origin in the destruction of the Basque town of Gernika in the Spanish Civil War, the painting is then used as a weapon in the propaganda battle against Fascism. Later it becomes the nucleus of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the detonator for the Big Bang of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s.
This tale of passion and politics shows the transformation of this work of art into an icon of many meanings, up to its long contested but eventually triumphant return to Spain in 1981.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the runup to the Iraq War, U.N. officials in New York hid a mural version of Pablo Picasso's painting depicting the 1936 fascist terror bombing of the Basque town of Gernika (as it is spelled in Basque) under a tasteful blue shroud testifying to its continuing power. An acclaimed biographer of Gaud , van Hensbergen turns in the definitive study of Picasso's antiwar masterpiece, which folds the disciplines of art criticism, political history and biography into a passionate, detailed and well-argued narrative. Beginning with a superb account of the work's genesis, both within the career of Picasso and against the terrible events of the Spanish Civil War, van Hensbergen not only helps us to understand the motifs and structures underlying the artist's great work but places them within the context of his life as a Spaniard in exile. The subsequent "career" of the work is also illuminated, from its journey across the Atlantic where it became a pivotal influence on postwar American painting to its resonance as a symbol of resistance to the long reign of General Franco and its place in the national reconciliations that took place after Franco's death. To be an icon of any kind is to court the risk of overfamiliarity; van Hensbergen's beautifully written and usefully illustrated book restores the lustrous and terrible beauty of a major cultural work.
