There are artists so inseparably attached to a single artwork that it is impossible to think of one without the other. The very mention of the Italian master Leonardo da Vinci immediately brings to mind ‘Mona Lisa’; and when you utter the phrase ‘The Rising Sun’ the name of Claude Monet instantly follows.

However, Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ is so full of mysteries, historical detail and contradictions ever since its creation more than 80 years ago that, after a while, you give up the whole idea of a traditional analysis and accept things as they are.

The gigantic canvas in black, white and gray is 3.49 metres tall and 7.76 metres wide. It was painted in Paris and, following a world tour for many decades, is now definitively housed at the Reina Sofia Museum of Madrid. The authorities of the museum have decided it will never leave the museum again.

‘Guernica’ is a heart-rending memorial to the suffering of the Spanish people during World War II

A stunningly realistic copy of ‘Guernica’, even bigger than the original, is currently being shown at the Picasso Museum of Paris. To the question “How can an entire exhibition be devoted to a single work of art that is not even there?” the answer is not difficult, if you have the patience and the passion to spend a few hours at the museum.

When the German Air Force bombarded the Spanish city of Guernica on April 26, 1937, Picasso was living and working in Paris and was 56 years old. Unable to visit the destroyed town in his home country, he depended on the horrifying black-and-white photographs published in the newspapers. His inspiration came from his own painting ‘Death of the Bullfighter’ that he had created only a few years earlier. He purposefully decided to avoid using colours in order to stick to the originality of his experience.

The terrified bull this time represented the people of Spain. The open-mouthed, fatally-injured soldier lying on his back next to a dying horse was the helpless Spanish army. Then there were further details of the horror: a crying woman with a dead child in her arms and a second one caught in the flames of a burning house, plus a frightened, puzzled bird representing peace.

Another female figure holding high a candle concluded the disastrous statement with a ray of hope.

Once you have digested these appurt­enances, you move into another hall full of historical details about the dictator Gen Franco’s decade-long confrontations with the Republican soldiers representing the people of Spain, on the wall-displayed posters.

A sizeable section of the exhibition is devoted to the role of photographer Dora Maar, who had originally met Picasso in order to take his pictures for an art magazine. She would stay with him for almost 10 years as his model, muse and mistress. Her contribution to the slow, steady and thoroughly-researched development of ‘Guernica’ would remain an essential part of Picasso’s inspiration.

More than 300 civilians, including some 50 children, died in the bombing. Apart from ‘Guernica’ itself, Picasso painted a long series of ‘Weeping Women’ with Dora Maar as model. All these portraits are also there in the current show in Paris.

Following its first exposition at the Paris International Art Exhibition in 1938, ‘Guernica’ would begin a long voyage first to London, then across the Atlantic to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. When the flames of war spread to France itself, upon Picasso’s own request, it would stay in MoMA for many years to come.

An entire hall of the Picasso Museum is devoted to the photographs and written details of ‘Guernica’s successive expositions practically in all the major cities of Europe for some two decades after the end of the World War II. When many Spanish museums also wanted to show it, Picasso refused.

“I don’t want this painting to cross Spain’s frontier as long as Gen Franco remains alive. ‘Guernica’ is all my art, all my work and all my life,” he declared to an art critic in 1969.

Picasso remained true to his word until his own death in the French city of Mougins in 1973 and ‘Guernica’ travelled to Spain only in 1981, six years after the death of Gen Franco in 1975. It was first exposed in the Cason del Buen Retiro Museum, then in 1992 was transferred to the Reina Sofia Museum from where it is not supposed to move — ever!

“Guernica” is being exhibited at the Musée National Picasso from March 27, 2017 to July 29, 2018

The writer is an art critic based in Paris. / ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 24th, 2018