Glass Comes Down From ‘Guernica’

For the first time in 14 years, Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica”--a powerful painting depicting the horrors of war--is hanging in Madrid without a glass shield to protect it from attack.

The painting, which portrays the Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, came to symbolize the outrages of European fascism.

Picasso went into exile after the war to oppose Francisco Franco’s 1939-1975 dictatorship, and had insisted that the painting not hang in Spain until democracy was restored. The painting was sent for safekeeping in 1939 to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and its return to Madrid’s Prado Museum was arranged in secret negotiations in 1981.

Since then, it had hung behind a thick distorting shield to protect it from attack by right-wing extremists nostalgic for the Franco era.

Jose Guirao, director of the Reina Sofia Art Museum, where the painting has hung since 1992, said that the shield was removed so the painting could be viewed without distortion.

“In addition to the story it tells of the civil war,” Guirao said, “there is a personal and private relationship between the painting and the person viewing it”

“Guernica,” a 23-foot by 10 1/2-foot oil on canvas, is now being protected by electronic surveillance, guards and a metallic band that keeps visitors three yards from the painting, Guirao said.