www.mural.ch: werke

dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch (eng/en)

künstler (in grau: assistent/in): Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach

titel: Guernica

jahr: 1955

adresse: UN Headquarters (Security Council, entrance), New York

+: A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica was displayed on the wall of the United Nations Building in New York City at the entrance to the Security Council room from 1985 to 2009. It was 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. The tapestry is less monochromatic than the original and uses several shares of brown.

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. As of 2012 the tapestry is on temporary loan to the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas for an indefinite period from the Rockefeller family. The tapestry is now back in the UN. It was clearly visible on CNN on March 10, 2015 when Hillary Clinton gave a press conference regarding her emails during her term of office as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.

(Wikipedia)

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