The Reina Sofía will transform Guernica into a symbol against the genocide in Gaza.

▲ The Spanish State acquired Guernica in 1937. Due to World War II, Picasso asked MoMA to safeguard the painting until democracy was restored in the Iberian country, which happened in 1981. Photo Europa Press

Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Thursday, September 18, 2025, p. 2

Madrid. The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía will convert Pablo Picasso's Guernica into a symbol against genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, announced the director of the contemporary art institute, Manuel Segade, during the presentation of next year's season, in which the situation of the Palestinian people and the relentless war carried out by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu will play a prominent role. Under the title History Doesn't Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes , a series of interventions inspired by Picasso's canvas will be presented, in a cycle that will also review some of the most painful human tragedies of recent decades, such as apartheid in South Africa.

Picasso's Guernica immediately became a symbol against fascism and war. It is perhaps the most important painting in the Malaga-born artist's prolific oeuvre, not only for its artistic value, but also because it became a symbol against barbarism. He began the painting when he was 56 years old, in his exile in Paris, with his focus on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The work was executed on a cloth 8 meters long and 3.5 meters wide, on which he captured 45 overlapping drawings, among which the most symbolic stand out: the bull, the horse, the light bearer. But also the women broken by pain and tears, and the mutilated bodies of the combatants.

Picasso was inspired by the Spanish Civil War, specifically by one of its most brutal and dramatic episodes: on May 1, 1937, a Nazi bomber squadron under Adolf Hitler's command, at the request of then-rebellious General Francisco Franco, flew over and attacked the small Basque town of Gernika for four hours. The city was wiped off the map, leaving thousands dead and wounded, according to historians. Picasso recalled this event, as well as other events of the war that forced him to go into exile in Paris and never return to Spain.

The mural was acquired from Picasso by the Spanish government in 1937. Due to the outbreak of World War II, the artist decided that the painting would remain in the custody of the Museum of Modern Art in New York until the end of the war. In 1958, Picasso renewed the loan of the painting to MoMA until democratic freedoms were restored in Spain, which occurred when the work returned to the Iberian country in 1981. Throughout those years, Guernica served to raise funds for Spanish refugees and became a symbol of the struggle against war, used, for example, in protests against the Vietnam War and later those perpetrated by the United States against Iraq.

This symbolic and historical value was highlighted by the director of the Reina Sofía Museum, Manuel Segade, who also affirmed that "art is not a static thing; it is something that is part of our lives" and that the "implicit message" of "no to war" in the canvas is still relevant. He even recalled that "just yesterday I received a meme in which one of the women from Guernica , with her arms raised, appeared on the Gaza flag, riding a bicycle. Guernica was seen on the streets during the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the war against Ukraine, and now with the conflict in Palestine. Its use as a public piece signifies freedom, not war; that's why it has an unstoppable life and functions as a poster that never expires."

The idea is to have contributions from artists based on the cycle History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes , a phrase traditionally attributed to Mark Twain, although he never wrote it.

An uncomfortable mirror

In the first cycle of the series, which will be curated by art historian and University of London professor Tamar Garb, Picasso's work (1937) will be in dialogue with Dumile Feni's African Guernica (1967). Created in South Africa during the 1960s, when racist apartheid -era legislation and police brutality conspired to create a violent and precarious context for Black life, the charcoal drawing is one of the key pieces by Feni, a fundamental artist of African modernism. In this way, the museum aims to open a reflection on the importance of Picasso for an artist who worked in Africa in the mid-20th century, but whose exposure to and knowledge of European modernism contributed to his invention of a pictorial style appropriate to his own political and social situation. Furthermore, the question arises: "To what extent was this young African artist inspired by the poetic languages ​​and political sensibilities of the older European artist's anti-war manifesto? And how might this relate to the African-centered cosmologies and creative traditions also present in Feni's work, ranging from references to local printmaking techniques and ancestral mythologies to localized cultural debates about the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the face of specific forms of tyranny and oppression?"

With this idea, the Reina Sofía Museum reminds us, as its director says, that " Guernica is less a hanging painting than an uncomfortable mirror for any current war."

▲ The Acrobat (1935), included in the Picasso Theatre exhibition at the British National Museum of Modern Art. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée National Picasso-Paris)

▲ The Weeping Woman (1937), included in the Picasso Theatre exhibition at the British National Museum of Modern Art. Photo Adrien Didierjean and © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2025

Cecilia Treviño

Special for La Jornada

La Jornada Newspaper, Thursday, September 18, 2025, p. 3

London. “The hours fall into the well / And fall asleep forever.” This poem by the Malaga-born painter greets visitors to the Picasso Theatre exhibition at the Tate Modern. It is like an omen of what awaits: time seems to stand still as they immerse themselves in the life and work of Pablo Picasso, intertwined with the world of entertainment.

We see him on a television screen when he appears as Carmen, wearing a large, curly wig, in Bizet's famous opera. From there, we step behind the scenes, allowing us to view a collection of works selected by the curators, artists Wu Tsang and Enrique Fuenteblanca, to reveal a sometimes forgotten side of one of the most prolific and important painters in contemporary art: his involvement in theater, ballet, film, and performance .

The exhibition features nearly 50 works including sculpture, textiles, film footage, and of course, some of his most important paintings such as Weeping Woman's Face , presented with exceptional lighting in a museography representing three areas of a theater.

While the spectator slowly makes his way backstage to the stage to enter the theater hall and, from there, be able to contemplate one of Picasso's most beloved works: The Three Dancers .

This work, which appears stage right, was painted 100 years ago and is part of the Tate's collection. It has been the subject of detailed research by museum staff and is now available to the public. Sharing the stage is the visual essay The Mystery of Picasso , projected in an original presentation across the front and back of a large screen.

The 78-minute documentary, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1956, shows Picasso's creative process in real time, using a filming system that was ahead of its time, using cameras and translucent paper so that the viewer can see how the lines and colors are formed in nearly 20 works, including drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings.

▲ The Three Dancers (1925), by the Malaga-born painter Pablo Picasso. Photo: Succession Picasso DACS, London 2025

Trial and error reveal the laborious mystery of Picasso, who destroyed the works after filming so that the documentary would be the only testimony of his creation, showing the way he corrected and rethought ideas, giving the impression of a spontaneous work.

The hypnotic documentary competes with the central figure of Picasso's Theatre : the work The Three Dancers , whose dimensions of 2.15 meters by 1.42 meters are difficult to appreciate in reproductions.

This piece invites prolonged contemplation until a shadow is found between the three dancers, the face of what is believed to represent his Catalan friend Ramón Pinchot, who died while the painter was creating the work.

In the "theater hall" there are three floors where visitors also become part of the performance by walking backstage or on stage.

The audience becomes part of the show as they appreciate the sculpture The Bronze Rooster or paintings depicting designs for plays or ballets, with background music transmitted through fine Genelec speakers, ideal for symphonic transparency.

This is how we learn or remember Picasso's close relationship with the stage, designing sets and costumes, as well as his intense collaboration with the Ballet Russes.

His closeness to the performing arts led him to write and direct his own absurdist play, Desire Caught by the Tail , in 1941, a deliberately chaotic work conceived –as is much of his work– as an act of artistic and political resistance.

The spectator leaves the Picasso Theatre into the early and beautiful London autumn after having been part of a performance , a magnificent experience, even if only for a couple of hours.

▲ Photo by Rebeca Monroy Nasr taken four decades ago at the La Fama textile factory, a space she is seeking to transform into a community museum. Photo courtesy of the historian.

Reyes Martínez Torrjos

La Jornada Newspaper, Thursday, September 18, 2025, p. 4

With the exhibition Workers(as) we are on the road we walk , which opened yesterday at the Museum Archive of Photography (MAF), photographer and historian Rebeca Monroy Nasr calls for the project to convert the facilities of the La Fama textile factory into a community museum for the conservation of the identity and memory of the community around that facility.

The teacher and researcher also told La Jornada that "today is important because we are recovering the non-hegemonic memory and the memory of workers and neighborhoods in this city, and this can contribute a grain of sand to generating this collectivity and new ways of working."

The photographs in the exhibition, which Monroy took four decades ago, show life in the factory and its last workers.

He recalled that the employees' homes were located around the factory, and even the managers lived there. "It's important to bring this up because after the factory closed in 1998, their families stayed there, but that identity and factory cohesion were gradually lost."

In recent years, the researcher has developed a work of rescuing non-hegemonic memory, a line that connects her most recent projects: the exhibition Obreros(as) somos en el camino andamos (We Are Workers on the Road ), which will conclude on November 6, and the e-book The Decisive Force of the Image: A View from Mexican Soil , which will be presented on Sunday at 5 p.m. at the International Book Fair of Anthropology and History.

The historian commented that the people of Tlalpan are working to preserve the space. "Conscious Art at La Fama AC has photos, band instruments, memories, and a host of things that would be worth recovering and having as a museum, as there is a search for identity and memory."

He added that "they were very combative workers against the charro unionism, for better working conditions and better hours," in a tradition that dates back to the 19th century, when they went on strike twice against excessive workloads. Their victory became a milestone in the country's working-class tradition.

Rebeca Monroy said the photographs were taken in 1984, when she accompanied her friend and colleague Mario Camarena, who was conducting interviews and oral history with La Fama workers. Retired Don Antonio and his wife Doña Justa took them inside the facility, where taking photographs was prohibited due to industrial secrecy.

Don Antonio “showed us all the stages of the factory, which was very nice, from how the cotton is stacked, how a thinner thread is extracted and put into the machine, etc. At that time, it was analog photography, and I used 125 ASA film and didn't like using a flash. Some images come out very grainy and blurry. They have that vintage feel.”

Cultural producers

The images show the wear and tear on the retirees' bodies. Her legs are bandaged due to varicose veins, a condition inherent to her work. "It's interesting to recapture this, which is why we are with Obreros(as)... I want to express that at that time we wanted to be cultural producers, not artists; we wanted to be cultural workers and thus show our solidarity with this community."

The space, Monroy Nasr continued, "keeps the memory of grandparents or great-grandparents alive, but it has been fading as descendants have had to take up other jobs and seek other ways of life. It's important that they recover it, learn from it, retain it, and be able to achieve a transformation."

Regarding the book The Decisive Force of the Image: A View from Mexican Soil , the author recalled that it originated in the short text Mexican Photography Council , published by the Center for the Image, and was an analysis of the photographs and visual heritage of that group.

“It's the story of how it came to be, who created it: Pedro Meyer and a series of photographer friends and associates, as well as Raquel Tibol, the art critic of the time. At the same time, another very important moment arose with the historian Eugenia Meyer and her volume , *Historical Image of Photography in Mexico* . These two elements were essential in transforming the way we view Mexican photography.”

The council gave the floor to photographers, and A View from Mexican Soil addresses what was built in the country, what photojournalists, photodocumentarians, and visual experimenters did, as well as the connection with a Latin America that is suffering under dictatorships.

Monroy Nasr emphasized that this is a very important time because photography "is telling these internal stories of non-hegemonic memory. Photographers from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile are collaborating," seeking to spread the word, and Mexico will be essential for this.

“Testimonies, papers, documents, and photographs will nourish this story that needed to be told. Armando Cristieto helps me with his prodigious memory and begins to tell me: Lourdes Almeida has a thousand documents, Antonio Turok too, and all these extremely important photographers begin to speak,” the professor added.

Figures who worked "with the new photojournalism at Unomásuno and later at La Jornada . Pedro Valtierra and all of them, who will open up a completely different vein of work, something that hadn't been seen before, and who will lead visual history and the gaze down a very provocative, subjective, and ideological path.

"That's the fundamental part that demolishes the myth of impartial photography and begins the critical stance of opinion. This is where we'll see and catapult all this information and the achievement of the Latin American encounter in these moments of great impact," concluded Rebeca Monroy.

Eirinet Gómez

La Jornada Newspaper, Thursday, September 18, 2025, p. 4

In the face of the violence plaguing Mexico and the ongoing wars around the world, philosopher, social activist, and social worker Fernanda Navarro affirmed: “Possibilities are open to everything, and with loyalty, you offer everything so that there are no wars, so that people don't kill each other just to have. When you are free, you don't have to repeat what is imposed on you; you are free to help the world.”

Navarro received a tribute and recognition from her peers for her career as a philosopher, as well as for her critical commitment that has inspired generations, at the first International Colloquium of Mexican Philosophy "From Silence to Echo: Our Mexican Women Philosophers." This is the first time that the Center for the Study of Mexican Philosophy has recognized a woman as a philosopher, the organizers emphasized.

Being with others

At the meeting, Lucía de Luna Ramírez, professor of indigenous philosophical thought at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, revealed a conversation she had with her mentor in early August on various topics: love, violence, communication, and the importance of knowledge.

"Understanding each other is the way to embrace each other, to be with each other, to love each other. You have to know how to listen; it's not the same as hearing; it means you pay more attention to try to understand what we've been told.

“Listening is like having your heart beat; it's deeper, it's not noise. We must remain silent because we are not born knowing. We must listen not only with our ears, but with humility, to hear what the words mean,” the teacher reflected.

In her conversation with De Luna Ramírez, the philosopher also raised the need to assess knowledge: "You have to look at what good and positive things your learning has brought you, ask yourself why, what for, who it benefits. You have to be innovative and make sure that knowledge is useful for something and for someone."

Navarro studied at UNAM and was the Latin American translator for the International Tribunal of the Conscience of Humanity. Throughout her life, she encountered León Felipe, Bertrand Russell, Louis Althusser, and José Revueltas, all of whom nourished her thinking.

In 2006, she joined Luis Villoro, who had been her teacher at UNAM, and remained her companion until the philosopher's death. Navarro often told her students that she had been many Fernandas throughout her life, but perhaps her meditations on interculturality and Zapatismo are one of her most distinctive traits.

"I experienced a turning point as a Mexican and as a philosophy scholar through my exposure to Mexican thinkers. My philosophical thinking was enriched by emphasizing the importance of recognizing the existence of other cultures of ours that had been marginalized, devalued, and forgotten in history as something obscure and hidden when compared to the Western world.

"It's not enough to recognize the existence of other cultures; there must be an interest and willingness to approach them, to know them, to understand them, to interact with them and among them. To embrace them," he wrote in one of the articles quoted during the tribute.

In his presentation, Manuel Ponce Rascón, a Mexican thinker and analyst, said there are two keys to understanding Fernanda Navarro: possibility and hope. "We must have hope, even if we have to wait," he often said in his classes. "It is to possibility that we owe our entire loyalty," one of his favorite quotes from Russell's work.

After receiving the Malinali Award from the Center for the Study of Mexican Philosophy, Navarro said that expressing what she feels would require a different approach: "I accept it with profound emotion. Our strength resides in our hearts, a loving bond filled with solidarity. To all of you, my most sincere gratitude. Thank you, life."

The tribute concluded with moving Mayan songs composed by his students, which reflect the contributions of Navarro's class.