HELLO MADRID!

We arrived in Madrid via train & walked from the station to our Hotel, which was as easy as it looked on the map...thank goodness!

Once unloaded we set out for our first destination, the Reina Sofia modern art museum.  It was here that I wanted to see works by Miro, but mainly, I wanted to see...

...Picasso's Guernica. (We weren't allowed to take photos, so I shot this one of the postcard!!) This painting is about the terror & trauma of war.  Picasso painted it in response to Franco's employing of the Nazis to bomb a small town in the north of Spain.  It is a riveting, sobering, important painting. And...if I may be so bold...just as relevant TODAY as it was during the Spanish civil war. A lot has been written about it, so google if you want more factual info. The things that stood out for me were;
*the choice to have such a minimal colour palette, when we think of Picasso's work, we tend to think of lots of colour. This is just black, white & grey
*the terror on the horse's face
*the bold linear 'lifelines' on the palms of the dying & the dead
*the contrast between the gentle light of the old fashioned candle & the glaring new electric light of 'enlightenment'
*the texture on the horse
*the terrified eyes of the people all over the place!

The other thing that moved me deeply, was the privilege of seeing it live.  I cannot express strongly enough how to see this painting in it's full live size, is to see a painting that refuses to remain in 2D, the way Picasso has used the lighter colours to draw further light to them, lifts the characters off the canvas.

Such a sobering piece of work, especially after we had seen magnificent yet harrowing war photos by Robert Capa beforehand.

I wonder if our governments would be so quick to send their men & women off to war-like situations if they had a life-size copy of this in their offices! Food for thought!