Picasso Museum VR Experience Traces Guernica's Political Journey

The Musée Picasso-Paris launches a virtual reality experience tracing the epic of Picasso's 'Guernica', one of painting's greatest political icons. The VR, created with Lucid Realities and VIVE Arts, immerses visitors in Picasso's Paris studio on rue des Grands Augustins and the smoking ruins of Gernika. On April 26, 1937, market day, the Basque town was annihilated by German aviation bombs at the request of Spanish nationalists. The experience uses Picasso's vivid sketches—corpses and imploring figures—projected like specters onto ruined buildings. Guides are writer Juan Larrea (1895–1980), who helped commission the canvas for the Spanish Republic pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, and photographer Dora Maar (1907–1997), Picasso's companion and militant antifascist who documented and participated in the painting's creation. The narrative follows the canvas's journey: presented in Paris, then touring the world before finding exile at MoMA New York until 1981. The VR stops there, but the real story continues: 'Guernica''s long itinerancy made it a global symbol of barbarism but also weakened the canvas. The Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, which has conserved it since 1992, now refuses any loan—not even to the Guggenheim Bilbao, which requested it for a 2027 exhibition marking the 90th anniversary of the bombing. This refusal has revived tensions with the Basque Country. The VR runs from April 8, 2026 to September 6, 2026 at the Musée national Picasso-Paris.