The Reina Sofía “strongly” advises against the transfer of ‘Guernica’ due to the risk of “new cracks and tears”

The Reina Sofía Museum “strongly” advises against the transfer of Picasso’s work ‘Guernica’ due to the “inevitable” vibrations in transporting works of art, following the Basque government’s request for its temporary accommodation in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which can cause “new cracks, lifting and loss of the pictorial layer, as well as tears.”

This is the main conclusion drawn from a new report on the state of conservation of the work, carried out by the Conservation-Restoration Department of the Reina Sofía Museum, accompanied by detailed images of Picasso’s work and published this Wednesday, March 25.

“The work is currently maintained in stable conditions thanks to a rigorous control of the environmental conditions. However, in view of a possible transfer, its format, nature of the elements that compose it and state of conservation, together with the numerous damages suffered over time, make it especially sensitive to all types of vibrations that are inevitable in transporting works of art. These vibrations could generate new cracks, lifting and loss of the pictorial layer, as well as tears in the support, which is why strongly advises against their transfer,” the report concludes.

The document states that to know the current state of ‘Guernica’ it is “essential to delve into the creative process used in its execution, its plastic evolution, as well as having a perfect knowledge of the materials and their distribution on the canvas”, in addition to reviewing “the material evolution over the years: the trips, the physical and chemical agents to which it has been exposed, the added materials and the restorations.”

The report details that the fabric, “in a single piece and without seams”, is composed of linen in the warp (horizontal direction) and jute in the weft (vertical direction), with “a factory preparation with an animal glue primer and white oil-based preparation”, on which a charcoal drawing and a complex game of superimposed layers can be observed.

Picasso resolves the space “in a heterogeneous way”, with “very diluted layers that allow the creation of transparencies” in some areas and others “of greater density and high covering power” that cover the underlying layer, while at different points the preparation and charcoal drawing remain visible. The original frame, made of coniferous wood (Scots pine) and made up of fifteen pieces, was replaced in 1964 by another with “a tensioning system designed by Andrew Olah, the MoMA carpenter.”

One of the “key” factors to understand the evolution of Guernica’s state of conservation is the study of the transfers to which it was subjected in the first years, which motivated successive restoration treatments between 1943 and 1957. That year, Jean Volkmer, founder and chief restorer of the Restoration Department at MoMA, “consolidated the pictorial layer by applying a wax-resin mixture on the back.”

After this treatment, the work made a new tour of the United States, after which, “due to concern over the poor condition of ‘Guernica’, it was decided not to move it again until it returned to Spain,” remaining “definitively” installed in a room on the third floor of the New York museum with the approval of Picasso, who rejected requests to travel to London (1960) and Paris (1967).

RECENT STUDIES CONFIRM A LARGE NUMBER OF “ALTERATIONS”

The report recalls that in 2012 an exhaustive study of the work began, delving into its state of conservation thanks to ultra-high resolution technical studies.

Studies with visible light have allowed us to appreciate the different alterations that the work has undergone. For example, on the support, the perimeter of the canvas presents a large number of alterations caused by the multiple nailing and unnailing of the frame, to which are added “strong tensions during assembly, tensions accentuated by the fact that it is a canvas of large proportions.”

Regarding the pictorial layer, “alterations such as cracks, craquelures and microfissures are frequently noted, attributed mainly to the tensions caused by the numerous rolling, transfers and manipulations during its years of roaming.”

On the other hand, it is recalled that in 2018 new chemical analyzes were published that identified “an oleoresinous medium present in commercial industrial paints from the 1930s”, whose mixture with oil “represents added fragility to the pictorial layer”, since “they increase its rigidity and possibility of cracking over time”, a critical factor to take into account when exposing the work to vibrations.

In addition, there are “losses, cracks, stains, holes, reintegrations, repainting, dirt and remains of the act of vandalism that it suffered in 1974.”

HISTORICAL REQUESTS FROM ‘GUERNICA’

The Reina Sofía Museum has rejected all loan requests for ‘Guernica’ made since its final arrival in Spain, according to the center’s historical reports.

Since 1997, institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, the Basque Government and the Gwangju Museum of Art in South Korea requested the temporary shipment of Picasso’s work, but in all cases the museum’s Board of Trustees denied the transfer.

The first attempt, promoted by the Guggenheim on the occasion of its inauguration, even motivated the organization of an international symposium on the ethical and technical risks of moving the mural, which concluded by advising against its manipulation.

The Board of Trustees has reiterated on different occasions that the Guernica constitutes the axis of the Reina Sofía collections and its most emblematic piece, the transfer of which would be “clearly inappropriate” from a technical and museological point of view. The museum considers the canvas an “irreplaceable” element in its exhibition discourse, equating its symbolic value for the institution to that of the ‘Monday Mona Lisa’ in the Louvre Museum.

Not even the MoMA in New York – which hosted the work during the Spanish exile – managed to obtain a loan in 2000, a refusal that the American museum fully understood, according to internal documentation.

THE BASQUE GOVERNMENT REQUESTS A SERIOUS ANALYSIS

The first vice president and Minister of Culture and Linguistic Policy, Ibone Bengoetxea, has warned that the request for the temporary transfer of Guernica to Euskadi “should not be dismissed with a no, without a serious and in-depth analysis.”

This past Tuesday, the autonomous Executive again requested the temporary transfer of Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ to the Guggenheim Museum between October 1, 2026 and June 30, 2027, a period of time in which the 90th anniversary of the constitution of the first Basque Government of Lehendakari Agirre and the bombing of Gernika is celebrated.

In a statement, Bengoetxea has described as “serious” the situation generated around the request for the temporary transfer of Guernica to Euskadi, and has defended that it is not “a merely technical issue”, but rather “a question of memory, recognition and reparation”.

As he highlighted, the Basque Government advocates “a change of outlook on the part of the Spanish Government, and joint work between Executives.”