by Jon Lackman | 18 July 2006 | Modern, Museums
Picasso has taken Madrid for the third time, writes Gérard Dupuy. In 1936, the Republican government made him honorary director of the Louvre; in 1981, Guernica settled there; and now he straddles the Prado and the Reina Sofia in the blockbuster exhibition Picasso: Tradition and Avant-Garde. Their rich holdings allow for poignant juxtapositions, such as Guernica opposite Goya’s Third of May. However, Dupuy writes, the comparison of Manet’s Execution of Maximilian with Picasso’s Korea Massacre, also on view, shows the exhibition’s limits. (See also Daniel Giralt-Miracle in El Pais, on “the last voyage of Guernica,” i.e. the ongoing campaign to get it shown in the Basque region.)
