A Painting Goes into Exile. Picasso’s Guernica in the United States

This article explores the evolution of Guernica after it departed from Europe in 1939 and was subsequently displayed in the USA to raise funds to support Republican victims during the Spanish Civil War. Initially unveiled in New York, the picture would tour different US cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago — accompanied by fund-raising campaigns and considerable media attention, albeit with scant economic gain. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the painting’s return to Europe became inviable and the work remained in the USA, becoming embedded there as a symbol of Republican exile and as an icon of modern art. After more than forty years under the protection of MoMA, Guernica finally “returned” to Spain in 1981, to a country where, paradoxically, it had never been, and where it was received as the “last exile”.