- Ibarrola made the canvas Guernica Gernikan as a claim to bring to the Basque Country the work Guernica de Picasso. The exhibition Arco de Madrid, in which it has remained since 1981.
The galerist and historian José de la Mano will take the work Guernica Gernikara, by Agustín Ibarrola, to the international contemporary art fair Arco de Madrid. The canvas has been kept for more than twenty years in Ibarrola’s Gametxoko farmhouse, along with other works. It is 40 years since Picasso’s Guernica mural was transferred from New York to Madrid, and Ibarrola’s work will be used to pay tribute to Pablo Ibar.
The work, two meters long and ten meters wide, uses various fragments of Picasso’s work, as Ibarrola said, with the intention of representing “the new Gernika” of the Basque Country. In 1977 and 1979 the canvas was placed in the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao and in 1981 it was last displayed in the gallery Caja Laboral Popular.
Work for claim
In addition to paying tribute to Picasso’s work, Ibarrola used his canvas to ask for the approach of the Guernica work to Euskal Herria. The painting of the bombing was transferred to Madrid in 1981, but several Basque artists, such as Chillida, Oteiza and Ibarrola, campaigned to approach Bizkaia. Guernica Gernika was part of this movement.