Of all the great paintings in the world, Picasso's Guernica has had a
more direct impact on our consciousness than perhaps any other. In this
absorbing and revealing book, Gijs van Hensbergen tells the story of
this masterpiece. Starting with its origin in the destruction of the
Basque town of Gernika in the Spanish Civil War, the painting is then
used as a weapon in the propaganda battle against Fascism. Later it
becomes the nucleus of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the
detonator for the Big Bang of Abstract Expressionism in the late 1940s.
This tale of passion and politics shows the transformation of this work
of art into an icon of many meanings, up to its long contested but
eventually triumphant return to Spain in 1981.
