MADRID: Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky made a one-day visit Tuesday to Spain and seized the opportunity to view Pablo Picasso\u2019s \u201cGuernica.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a move laden with symbolism.<\/p>\n
Among the last century\u2019s most famous paintings, \u201cGuernica\u201d depicts the horrors of war \u2014 specifically the bombardment of civilian targets. The enormous, black-grey-and-white painting features screaming women, flailing horses and a gored bull. Picasso used them to represent the bombing by Nazi and fascist Italian war planes of the town named Guernica in 1937, during Spain\u2019s Civil War.<\/p>\n
The painting\u2019s distorted, cubist figures have since become a symbol of suffering, violence and resistance. At the United Nations, a tapestry of it hangs at the entry to the Security Council\u2019s chamber, where Russia is one of five nations with a permanent seat.<\/p>\n
Zelensky referenced the painting before. In April 2022, while remotely addressing Spain\u2019s parliament just months into Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he said:<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine that people now \u2014 in Europe \u2014 live for weeks in basements to save lives. From shelling, from air bombs. Daily! April 2022 \u2014 and the reality in Ukraine is as if it\u2019s April 1937. When the whole world learned the name of one of your cities \u2014 Guernica.\u201d<\/p>\n
The painting has had other famous visitors. Former US President Barack Obama viewed it in 2018 on a visit with Spain\u2019s King Felipe VI. The novelist Salman Rushdie came to see \u201cGuernica,\u201d too, a few years after a stabbing attack that cost him his vision in one eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuernica\u2019 is possibly the world\u2019s first anti-war painting,\u201d said Giles Tremlett, a historian who has written extensively about Spain under former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco. \u201cIt represents something that has had continuity since then … and today is highly visible in Ukraine, so it seems highly apt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s Civil War ended in 1939, after which Franco ruled as dictator until his death on Nov. 20, 1975 \u2014 almost exactly fifty years ago.<\/p>\n
Picasso had forbidden the painting from being shown in Spain while Franco remained in power, so it was lent to New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art in 1939 and displayed there for decades.<\/p>\n
The painting returned to Spain in 1981, months after Spain\u2019s young democracy survived an attempted military coup that was considered the last serious attempt to revert its transition to democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen \u2018Guernica\u2019 came to Spain in 1981, for us, it was a symbol of hope that there was no way Spain was going back,\u201d said Antonio Cazorla-S\u00e1nchez, a professor of Spanish history at Trent University in Canada.<\/p>\n
Zelensky\u2019s tour of European capitals, including Spain, underscores Kyiv\u2019s urgent need to reassure allies and continue to shore up support for Ukraine. Engaging partners through speeches to parliaments and appearances at major forums has become a hallmark of his leadership.<\/p>\n
Those efforts come amid growing pressures at home and abroad as a damaging corruption scandal and other domestic strains threaten to distract attention from the war effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MADRID: Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky made a one-day visit Tuesday to Spain and seized the opportunity to view Pablo Picasso\u2019s \u201cGuernica.\u201d It was a move laden with symbolism. Among the last century\u2019s most famous paintings, \u201cGuernica\u201d depicts the horrors of war \u2014 specifically the bombardment of civilian targets. The enormous, black-grey-and-white painting features screaming women, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89847,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89832\/revisions\/89847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}