Guernica

Lluís Barba (Barcelona, 1952) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited in cities across Europe, the United States, Latin America, Canada and Japan. His artistic practice has a strong social-critical dimension and addresses the mechanisms of a system that shapes individual behaviour, encourages conformity and promotes a consumer-based society.

His work Guernica reflects human nature and on how violence is represented and assimilated through the media. This is particularly significant in the case of children and adolescents, whose vulnerability may make them especially receptive to images and messages of cruelty, hostility and violence. Given the repeated exposure to such representations in the media, they risk becoming commonplace and banal, despite referring to a reality marked by suffering.

To develop this intervention, the artist draws on a range of symbolic elements that interact and establish relationships with one another. Around Guernica, he incorporates various messages and images that viewers can interpret metaphorically, forging new connections between Picasso’s work, the representation of violence and its reception in the present day.

Exhibited as an installation under the title En Memoria a Guernica. Picasso (In Memory of Guernica. Picasso), the work is accompanied by photographs placed on the floor in front of it, depicting the victims and perpetrators of various conflicts.