Madrid, Oct 3 (IANS/EFE) Picasso, Miro, Antonio Berni, Fernand Leger and Charlotte Perriand were some of the artists whose work Spain’s Queen Sofia showed interest in during the inauguration of the “Encuentros con los 1930s” exhibit at the Madrid museum.
With this huge exposition, the Queen Sofia Museum is celebrating the 75th year since Pablo Picasso painted “Guernica”, a rendering of the devastating bombing of that northern Spanish town April 26, 1937.
Accompanied by the wife of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Elvira Fernandez Balboa; Education, Culture and Sports Minister Jose Ignacio Wert; the president of the Queen Sofia Museum foundation, Guillermo de la Dehesa, and museum director Manuel Borja-Villel, the queen strolled leisurely through the two floors on which the works of art are displayed.
With more than 400 pieces, 75 percent of which have never been publicly displayed before in Spain, the exhibit intends to redefine the conceptual and historical parameters of a key period of the 20th century.
Queen Sofia posed before the 1937 painting by Antonio Berni “New Chicago Athletic Club”, and walked slowly through the section in which posters of the great international exhibitions are displayed, stopping before a large work by Leger and Perriand.
Works by Miro and Picasso also attracted the queen’s attention, and she also posed for photographs before “Guernica”.
The bombardment of Guernica, a town of 5,000 people, was by the German and Italian allies of Gen. Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
As immortalized by Picasso, the attack has come to symbolize the horror of war and the suffering of the civilian population, whether targeted directly or simply caught in the crossfire.
–IANS/EFE
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