Voces del Prado

Holding Picasso’s drawings in my hands

Ana Gutiérrez Márquez, Senior Technician of Museums (Conservation of 19th Century Painting), 1975-2018

Along the side walls of the central room in the Casón glass cases had been installed for all the preparatory drawings for Guernica and the ones he did after it, which came from the donation made by Picasso. As all the arrangements had been made by the Ministry we couldn’t do anything: I saw “we” but I mean essentially the head of the Casón at that time. We could only be present and look on while they did all the work to unroll the painting and install the drawings.
One day, when the drawings weren’t yet in the cases and we finished work at 8 in the evening, don Joaquín said to me, “Ana, would you like to spend the night here and we’ll catalogue all the Picasso drawings? As we’re not going to get another chance, they’re going to put them in the cases and they won’t let us do it...”. There were a lot of drawings, I can’t remember the number, but more than 80. Of course it seemed to me a unique opportunity, to learn about and hold Picasso drawings in my hands.
We didn’t have a table or anything and sitting on the carpet in the central room we ate a roll and spent all night cataloguing and inventorying the drawings. We did a fantastic piece of cataloguing that was the one we used until Guernica left. The Ministry did a catalogue later but the one we did ourselves was more useful to us.