Voces del Prado

Picasso's Guernica. Working on an iconic painting in the year 1981

Carmen Garrido Pérez, Head of the Technical Office, 1982-2012

It was the year 1981, we hadn't been in the Museum for too long and suddenly, in September, the Guernica arrived in Spain.
The two people who took care of everything, packing and all that, were Álvaro Martínez Novillo, deputy director of Plastic Art, and José María Cabrera, the Director of the [Restoration] Institute. They were the ones responsible for setting it up at the Casón del Buen Retiro.
It was all done with great secrecy. One day they called me and told me we had to take all the equipment in a van to the Casón.
Through other people I already knew they were flying to Spain with the Guernica.
All in all I had to work uncomfortably in a small room where that huge roll was being kept. We started by undoing the small ones and behind me in a corner, there was a guardia civil, with his machine gun. I remembered my days of running ahead of the police in May of 68 and thought to myself, "What if that machine gun gets out of hand?" He was there with us, walking round in circles all day long and we were talking about the painting all day long, about what it would be like... Here at the Casón, with someone from the Institute, María del Carmen Hidalgo, we were down on the floor, setting up the plates because the conditions were what they were and we were ready with all the materials waiting to be able to start working. What was going on? It became so busy with so many visits and we couldn't work. When they took it out of that small room it was the first time I saw a camera with external vision. Those were the security measures at the time, and then it was quite impressive. We weren't very used to the conditions and for quite some time we were unable to work due to all the visitors.
At 9 p.m. everyone left and José María Cabrera said, "Let's do the plates."
I had three small children and had to leave because I was neglecting my family.
At last we were able to prepare some documents and other things. You always find something when you know how to look for it. There was also a sort of psychological or intellectual emotion, whatever you want to call it, beyond the painting itself, the political issue was at the fore. Not much showed up on the X-rays because there was a problem with the internal layers of lead. Then using infrared light we got to the bull and in the upper part there were five or six eyes, not just the two that we can see. And the warrior was facing in the other direction. When comparing the bull with all the prior work done by Picasso, you could know between what days the change had been made. And with the warrior it turns out that the change took place the night before taking the painting to the exhibition, because in the last picture taken by Dora Maar that change had not yet been made. In the technical parts we could see the transparency of colour in Picasso. When you reproduce the painting, black and white show up--nothing else. But if you look at it under a special light, blue, ochre and red hues show up. There is a great deal of colour that cannot be seen when looking at a reproduction.