The Basque regional government has formally asked Spain’s Ministry of Culture to authorize a temporary loan of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, according to Ara, a Catalan-language newspaper. If the move is approved, it would mark the first time the painting has traveled since it was installed at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía in 1992.
The proposed transfer would take place between October 2026 and June 2027, coinciding with the 90th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica, the Basque city whose destruction by Nazi and Italian Fascist air forces on April 26, 1937, inspired Picasso to paint the antiwar canvas.
Imanol Pradales, the lehendakari, or head of government, for Basque Country in northern Spain, said the proposed loan would be “a formula for symbolic reparation and historical memory” for the Basque people, as well as a “message to the world” about “what war entails and the atrocity that derives from dictatorship,” per Ara.
It’s far from the first transfer request from the Basque government for Guernica. The government has done so several times over the years for other anniversaries, as well as the the opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao in 1997. Barcelona also requested a transfer in 1992. None have been successful so far.
Painted in Paris over the course of five or six weeks, the monumental canvas measures 11 feet 5 inches by 25 feet 6 inches. It was first shown at the 1937 World’s Fair before touring Europe and the US. It was brought to the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, with Picasso stipulating that it should not return to Spain until democracy was restored. With the Franco dictatorship ending in 1975, MoMA transferred the painting to Spain in 1981, first to the Prado and then, in 1992, to the Reina Sofía. It has remained there ever since.
If the Reina Sofía has its way, it will stay that way. The museum released a conversation report last week in which it “strongly discouraged” any transfer, saying that it is too fragile to travel. The Basque government, for its part, has proposed a joint commission to evaluate the viability and costs of a move.
While it would normally seem an open-and-shut-case, the current Guernica request could go forward due to the particular political situation in Spain right now. According to the Times of London, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is the head of a minority coalition government reliant on two Basque nationalist parties, both of whom have raised the Guernica issue. Pradales went so far as to warn Sánchez that denying the request would be “a grave political error.”
Sánchez has yet to render a final decision, and Pradales said that he is expecting to continue discussions with the Ministry of Culture after the Easter holiday.
