{"id":832129,"date":"2026-07-29T22:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T22:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/832129\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T22:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T22:13:10","slug":"madrid-museum-puts-picasso-in-dialogue-with-african-guernica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/832129\/","title":{"rendered":"Madrid Museum Puts Picasso in Dialogue With “African Guernica”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feature<\/a><\/p>\n

Dumile Feni\u2019s monumental drawing is part of the Museo Reina Sof\u00eda’s new program “History Doesn\u2019t Repeat Itself, but It Does Rhyme.” <\/p>\n


\n \"Agnish
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"Madrid
\n Dumile Feni’s “African Guernica” (1967) is at the center of a new exhibition at the Museo Reina Sof\u00eda in Madrid that reimagines Picasso’s iconic anti-war painting. (\u00a9 Estate Dumile Feni and Dumile Feni Family Trust; courtesy Museo Reina Sof\u00eda, Madrid)<\/p>\n

MADRID \u2014 Spanning over 25-feet wide and 11-feet high, Pablo Picasso\u2019s painting \u201cGuernica\u201d (1937) is as monumental in size as it is in cultural significance. Its startling depiction of state brutality against civilians has made it an emblem of post-war Spanish identity, and its cry against violence has resonated with besieged people worldwide \u2014 from Vietnam to Gaza \u2014 throughout the past nine decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new annual exhibition series at the Museo Reina Sof\u00eda in Madrid, which has served as the canonical work’s permanent home since 1992, places \u201cGuernica\u201d in dialogue with other artworks. The new program, titled History Doesn\u2019t Repeat Itself, but It Does Rhyme<\/a>, partly aims to revisit the universal political impulses behind the anti-war painting \u2014 but its first iteration also exposes race as an urgent issue for contemporary art institutions in Spain.<\/p>\n

The inaugural installment sees Picasso\u2019s masterpiece paired with the late South African artist Dumile Feni\u2019s \u201cAfrican Guernica\u201d (1967), a large-scale charcoal drawing that evokes a similar spirit of protest and anguish. While the former responded to the bombing of the eponymous Basque town by fascist forces on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, \u201cAfrican Guernica\u201d emerged from the insidious, pervasive violence of racism during South African Apartheid.<\/p>\n

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