Exhibit recalls German destruction of Spanish town of Guernica

Detail from Picasso's "Guernica;" click on the photo for a larger image

April 25, 2000
Web posted at: 9:09 p.m. EDT (0409 GMT)

In this story: As many as 1,600 may have died Cultural ties forged with two German towns Pulitzer-Prize photo among the art RELATED STORIES, SITES

GUERNICA, Spain (AP) -- It took a painting to draw world attention to the German bombing of this small town during the Spanish Civil War. Forty artists from around the world will commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the attack this year in an exhibition entitled "Art Toward Reconciliation."

The show opens at the Guernica Kultur Etxea (Culture House) on Wednesday, the date in 1937 that Hitler sent his Condor Legion warplanes to aid Gen. Francisco Franco's fascist forces.

Victorious in 1939, Franco ruled Spain until his death in 1975. His attempt immediately after the bombing to blame it on Republican forces failed, in no small part due to Spanish painter Pablo Picasso.

It was Picasso's masterpiece, the black and white mural "Guernica," that shattered Franco's myth.

Commissioned by the Republican government for the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, the mural has become a symbol of reconciliatory peace and resistance to tyranny. It is filled with symbolic violence and human agony and hope, and is seen as an allegorical representation of the Civil War and a premonition of the horrors of World War II.

As many as 1,600 may have died

Church bells rang out as German planes raided the village, dropping bombs for three hours, more than 32 tons of explosives, on a traditional Monday market day. The town was flattened. The planes strafed fleeing civilians with machine guns.

No one agrees on how many people died in what is considered the world's first saturation bombing raid on a civilian target. During Franco's long dictatorship, documentary evidence was destroyed and survivors were afraid to speak out. Today's estimates range from 250 to 1,600 dead.

It would be difficult to find a better symbol of world peace than this traditional Basque mountain village. Home to 15,000 residents only a few miles inland from the Gulf of Biscay and 15 miles east of Bilbao, the town shelters the sacred Guernica Tree, where generations of Spanish kings swore to respect the rights of the Basque people.

Today, Guernica has a peace museum and an international peace research center.

Cultural ties forged with two German towns

On the 60th anniversary of the bombing, German President Roman Herzog sent a letter to the survivors expressing regret and extending "a hand of friendship and reconciliation." The German Parliament later officially ratified the gesture.

Over the years, Guernica has developed close cultural ties with Dresden and Pforzheim, two German cities leveled by Allied bombing during the World War II.

The driving force behind this year's art show has been Australian artist William Kelly and Juan Gutierrez, director of the Guernica Peace Research Center.

"It is our generation's task to show reconciliation rather than capitulation as real victory," Kelly says in notes prepared for the exhibition. "There is very little written about art and reconciliation and this may be the first exhibition that deals with this on an international basis."

Pulitzer-Prize photo among the art

Gutierrez says remembering past wars can prevent future ones.

He said Picasso's painting had made of Guernica "a symbol not only for the Basques and Germans and for the war of 1936-39 ... but also for opening a horizon and advancing toward reconciliation in the world."

The art going on display ranges from Aboriginal motifs by Annie Franklin of Australia, Karen Casey of Tasmania and Benjamin Mckeown of Australia to the poignancy of a kiss in a time of war and violence by U.S. artist Robert Godfrey.

There are contributions by artists from Austria, Spain, Germany, England, South Africa and China, many done specifically for the exhibition.

In contrast to the colorful prints and paintings is Nick Ut's famous black and white photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running in terror from soldiers after a napalm attack. The photograph, taken for The Associated Press, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Kelly said Ut's photograph was chosen because it helped change American attitudes by giving a human face to the enemy and becoming "a symbol that has helped lead toward reconciliation."

The exhibition runs in Culture House through May 31 and moves June 8-September 30 to the Guernica Peace Museum next door. There are plans to take the exhibition to other Spanish cities and to the German cities of Dresden and Pforzheim.

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