Guernica

So our museum stop was the Reina Sofia National Centre of Art. Madrid's MOMA. There's a huge abundance of art galleries in Madrid but this is the only one we intend to visit. We just don't have the time or energy to see them all. It's also not our thing. Art takes time and a focus our trips don't have. However here I did have one aim, the Picasso exhibition. And what an exhibition. There was room after room after room of his paintings exploring the development of his style and themes from a woman in an armchair to, well, a woman in an armchair. But what came between was a moment in history that shocked the world and heralded the slaughter that was to come across the world. In 1937 Franco in his quest to take over the whole country accepted the assistance of Hitler and dropped incendiary bombs on a market town on market day. The hell that befell that town is well documented and not least in Picasso's Guernica, named after the town. The huge painting of figures in painful contortions seemed to fit Picasso's style like he'd been chosen many years before to immortalise the horrors of this day. And it's this painting that inspired this exhibition about the horrors of war. We left feeling educated a little more about the work of one of the world's biggest art icons. This grainy photo was all I could sneak of an exhibition that forbade photography.