A roommate on the Gernika trails
- Chronicle of the guided tour to the exhibition The Laughter of Space (Gernika). Where: San Sebastian, at the San Telmo Museum. When: 27 January. The exhibition will remain open until 25 February.
It's Saturday morning. And there, on the side, under Urgull, I'm going to see the laughter of the Space of José Ramón Amondarain (Gernika). I entered San Telmo at 11 a.m., although it is the first time I have, as I know that is then when there are guided tours in Basque. The introducer has presented me to the employee who will visit me. Let's call it, M.
“It looks like you’ll be alone,” he says. Well, I shrugged and I left. M went through a door and, before entering the exhibition, he made me a little entrance. “People think that in Picasso the exhibition refers to Gernika, but not: J.R. It's an exhibition by Amondarain. Gernika is just an excuse.”
M and I have become fellow travellers. We are at the entrance of the exhibition and we have at the height eight large wooden boxes. In 2012, on the 75th anniversary of Gernika, Amondarain painted the eight photographs that Dora Maar made the artist in the size of Gernika for the Artium of Vitoria. Picasso's heirs exercised their property rights and forced him to withdraw the works. Well, in the boxes are the forbidden cloths, M explained to me. Amondarain has focused the laughter of Space (Gernika) on the impossibility of showing them and on the cracks of the artistic system.
Now, the exhibition is in front of you. On the right road there are three paintings – in black and white, in color and in color camouflage. “Gernika figures cannot be copied, the style can be copied,” explains M the similarity. The last of the three paintings is double-sized. “Why?” I say. “To make the visitor feel smaller in front of the icon that is Gernika,” he says. On the left are hanging small sculptures that dry the oil. M says they are “macguffins,” an excuse. They look calcined and they bring the perfume of the bombing. “The symbols of Picasso’s world have been taken out of the box: the materialization of painting.” I agree, I touch on the idea.
We continue to walk through the exhibition, and I think the one who took me the most is the one who taught me the last one. They look like pictures, but they are pictures that the viewer must cross and discuss: The Pablito computer that does the conservation of Guernica Reina Sofía, an Artium room, a Gernika graffiti that came to Spain, American soldiers in IwoJima and so on up to sixteen works. “These are drawings about Gernika’s biography,” says M.
That concludes the explanations. It is only for me, and yet it has done so enthusiastically. In the afternoon he tells me that he has another visit, in Spanish, and there he does, that the Majo group meets. M turned to a chair in front of the wall, and I walked out of the way. The recommendation is that until 25 February the Gernika trails will be able to circulate.
Behin batean, gazterik, gidoi nagusia betetzea egokitu zitzaion. Elbira Zipitriaren ikasle izanak, ikastolen mugimendu berriarekin bat egin zuen. Irakasle izan zen artisau baino lehen. Gero, eskulturgile. Egun, musika jotzen du, bere gogoz eta bere buruarentzat. Eta beti, eta 35... [+]
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