page_title: Guernica (Picasso)
section_title: Tapestry at the United Nations
hierarchical_section_title: Guernica (Picasso) / Tapestry at the United Nations
caption_attribution_description: English: Tapestry of Picasso's Guernica, by Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach, at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. It is significant for the political and cultural stance of the Whitechapel Gallery, which exhibited the painting in 1939. The original work is now too fragile to leave Madrid; this tapestry was loaned to the gallery, for its re-opening, by its owner Margaretta Rockefeller. Normally it hangs in the United Nations in New York where in 2003 it was controversially veiled prior to a speech by Colin Powell on the eve of the Iraq war.
context_page_description: Guernica is a large 1937 oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. One of Picasso's best known works, Guernica is regarded by many art critics as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history. It is exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
  The gray, black, and white painting, which is 3.49 meters tall and 7.76 meters across, portrays the suffering of people and animals wrought by violence and chaos. Prominent in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, screaming women, dismemberment, and flames.
  Picasso painted Guernica at his home in Paris in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, Guernica was exhibited at the Spanish display at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, and then at other venues around the world. The touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief. The painting soon became famous and widely acclaimed, and it helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War.
context_section_description: A full-size tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica, by Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach, is hung at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City at the entrance to the Security Council room. It is less monochromatic than the original and uses several shades of brown.
  The Guernica tapestry was first displayed from 1985 to 2009, and returned in 2015. Originally commissioned in 1955 by Nelson Rockefeller, since Picasso refused to sell him the original, the tapestry was placed on loan to the United Nations by the Rockefeller estate in 1985. 
  On 5 February 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work at the UN, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Some diplomats, however, in talks with journalists claimed that the Bush administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other US diplomats argued for war on Iraq. In a critique of the covering, columnist Alejandro Escalona hypothesized that Guernica's "unappealing ménage of mutilated bodies and distorted faces proved to be too strong for articulating to the world why the US was going to war in Iraq", while referring to the work as "an inconvenient masterpiece."
  On 17 March 2009, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Marie Okabe announced that the Guernica tapestry had been moved to a gallery in London in advance of extensive renovations at UN Headquarters. The Guernica tapestry was the showcase piece for the grand reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery. It was located in the 'Guernica room' which was originally part of the old Whitechapel Library. In 2012 the tapestry was on temporary loan from the Rockefeller family to the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas.
  It was returned to the UN by March 2015.
caption: The tapestry, at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2009
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