A Masterpiece, Misplaced

After years of anticipating a European excursion, I knew exactly how I would spend my first day in Madrid. First, I would stroll down a scenic street called “Paseo del Prado.” Lined with countless trees and bright flowers, its sidewalk painters, musicians, and booksellers would entertain me as I reached the legendary Prado Museum. There, I would immerse myself in Spain’s history and culture through its renowned art collection. Without hurry or pressure, I would casually spend the day losing myself in paintings, snapping flash-less pictures, and buying overpriced relics at the gift shop. I would leave for last one painting—the painting I had studied in so many different classes because of its broad significance, the painting known for its artistic innovation as well as its social conscience, the painting that would climax not only my first day in Madrid but possibly my entire trip—Picasso’s “Guernica.”

While I did, indeed, walk down Paseo del Prado and wander through rooms of remarkable art in the Prado Museum, I had incorrectly assumed that it would be home to “Guernica.” In fact, the Prado Museum houses artwork dating only until the mid-nineteenth century. Its existing collection is certainly nothing short of impressive—greatness covered every inch of the innumerable walls. In fact, the vast quantity of paintings by the old Spanish Masters, El Greco, Goya, and Velazquez, particularly struck me. El Greco’s “Crucifixion” was moving, Goya’s “Shootings of the Third of May” chilling, and Velazquez’s “Las Meninas,” the museum’s obvious jewel, breathtaking beyond all my expectations. Yet the exceptional experience felt incomplete—personally, as well as historically.

I embarked on a search for “Guernica,” which led me to the nearby Reina Sofia Museum. Merely 5 feet 4 inches tall, I gazed up at almost 12 feet of canvas. The painting left me dumb-struck as it brilliantly resonated with a passion, power, and emotion as if it were a living thing. The colossal mural commemorates the brutal aerial bombardment of the ancient Basque town Guernica by German and Italian squadrons during the Spanish Civil War. As a modern historical painting, it draws on archetypal images such as bulls, horses, and melancholy women—particularly Spanish themes but nevertheless universal. These images, fragmented and pained, startlingly convey the horrific bombing without resorting to realist or romantic terms. The painting’s stark absence of color is equally impressive. Painted solely in shades of black and white, the images employ symbolic and graphic punch while vibrating with intense expression. To a contemporary audience acquainted with black-and-white newspapers and film, the colorless palette additionally connotes objectivity to an otherwise emotional piece. As I stood impacted both by the scene’s complexity and passion, I did not question “Guernica” as the paradigm of modern art.

Unfortunately, excluding the otherwise limited Picasso and Dali collections, the Reina Sofia Museum did not meet the standard of excellence set by the Prado. Its twentieth century art collection lacked both quantity and quality. In contrast to the Prado, where the walls seemed more a collage of masterpieces than a museum display, the Reina Sofia’s wall space greatly exceeded the necessity for a small, growing collection. Inaugurated only in 1992, the young museum’s disproportions portrayed an atmosphere of scarcity. Indeed, within the context of these imbalances, the majority of the pieces in the museum’s limited collection provided questionable answers to the art historian’s favorite question: “What is art?” The Reina Sofia’s deficiencies truly tainted its few thrilling, innovative pieces with mediocrity and, correspondingly, undermined “Guernica’s” artistic, social, and historical significance.

To group Picasso’s “Guernica” with paintings and sculptures which merely exist to redraw the boundaries of art is an insult its political and artistic value. The old Spanish masters are known throughout the world and represent Spain’s rich history, culture, and artistic innovation, much like the Prado. As engaged as I was when viewing the vast collection of traditional art at the Prado and Picasso’s “Guernica” at the Reina Sofia, my piecemeal experience with Spanish art was disappointing. To exclude modern art, particularly Picasso, from such a prominent, iconic museum is to exclude a pivotal moment in Spanish history. As a history aficionado and modern art connoisseur, I resented the extra walk down Paseo del Prado to find my favorite aspects of Spanish art—cubism, Picasso, and “Guernica”—in a young, growing museum instead of in Spain’s great established museum like I had expected. Then again, I’m sure my deskbound peers wouldn’t mind trading their filing and copying for a summer stroll down the streets of Madrid, Picasso or no Picasso.

Giselle Barcia ‘08, a Crimson editorial editor, is an english concentrator in Mather House. She treasured her visit to Spain despite the fact that Guernica was not in the Prado, and now wishes she was at either museum instead of at her office job.