Global touring takes its toll on Picasso picture

Curators at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid are conducting x-ray, infrared and other hi-tech studies of Picasso's famed anti-war masterpiece Guernica, which has revealed severe wear and tear from its journeys around the word.A team of 30 technicians have identified 129 changes to the painting, named after the small Basque town bombed by German fighter planes backing General Francisco Franco during the Spanish civil war.The painting is now in a “serious but stable condition”, curator Jorge García Gómez Tejedor said in yesterday's El País. It does not yet need to be restored but it should not be moved, he said.The finding bolsters the museum’s argument against transferring the masterpiece to the Basque region, where the town of Guernica is located and which nationalists consider its rightful home. They have repeatedly called for the painting to be moved there or at least put on temporary exhibition in the region.

Last year, on the 70th anniversary of the Guernica bombing, the director of the Guggenheim in Bilbao entered the fray. He requested that experts study whether a transfer would be as damaging as the Reina Sofia curators had claimed.

The study, to be completed by 2010, had been kept secret until now because of the controversy, according to El País.

Picasso’s black-and-white scene of war’s destruction toured the globe to raise awareness for the republican cause during the civil war, then took up residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Much of the damage occurred when the mural was rolled up with each transfer.