Oral History

Roland Dumas (Limoges, France, 1922), lawyer, politician and executor of Pablo Picasso’s will. Dumas was in charge of drafting the artist’s will with respect to Guernica, guaranteeing that both the painting and its preparatory works would only reach Spain once public liberties representative of democratic States were reinstated, and regardless of government.

Claude Ruiz Picasso (Boulogne-Billancourt, France, 1947), artist, film-maker and son of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot. In this interview, Claude Picasso offers his view of the process to transfer Guernica to Spain following the death of his father in 1973: the conflictive relationship with Roland Dumas, executor of the artist’s will, his family’s grievance over the moral right of the work, and its installation in the Museo Reina Sofía.

Tony Shafrazi (Abadan, Iran, 1943), artist and art dealer. To the backdrop of the Vietnam War and its political and social impact in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Shafrazi explains the reasons behind his 1974 action protest against an anti-war icon such as Guernica.

“I wanted to make it scream. And the scream came out. It woke the world up in one way or another”.

Álvaro Martínez-Novillo (Madrid, 1948) was deputy director-general of Plastic Arts in Spain’s Ministry of Culture the year Guernica (1937) arrived in Spain. With Javier Tusell as the general director of Fine Art, he witnessed, first-hand, negotiations between Spain and the USA to agree on Pablo Picasso’s work landing in Madrid-Barajas Airport in 1981

A production of:

Museo Reina Sofía, Museu Picasso Barcelona and Mussée Picasso Paris

Oral History

Interview with Roland Dumas

Paris, 2019

Interview with Claude Picasso

Paris, 2019

Interview with Tony Shafrazi

New York, 2019

Interview with Álvaro Martínez-Novillo

Madrid, 2023

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Oral History