Cavart e l’itinerario di Guernica: un oggetto-manifesto

Abstract

In 1975, «Casabella» magazine dedicated two full pages to the journey of Guernica through the cities of Padua, Venice, and Bologna. The journey did not involve Picasso’s original painting, but rather a full-scale replica with identical colors and dimensions, produced between 1974 and 1975 by the radical architecture group Cavart (Piero Brombin, Piera Paola Bortolami, Michele De Lucchi, Boris Premrù-Pastrovicchio, and Valerio Tridenti). Owing to the symbolic power of Guernica as a denunciation of the horrors of war, the replica became a performative object and a catalyst for happenings, collective actions, and interventions, contributing to the creative framework of the film Guernica: Perspective of the 21st Century.Detached from its original context – and, in a sense, from itself – Picasso’s work was performed, cut, crossed, and used as a backdrop for both political actions and souvenir photographs. This contribution examines Guernica: Perspective of the 21st Century as a compelling case study in the redefinition and re-semantization of a mediated artwork, exploring its dual nature as both image and object.