Guernica

On April 26, 1937, the German air force carried out a bomb raid on the civilian population of the village of Basque town of Guernica at the behest of the nationalist government of Spain. In response to this Pablo Picasso painted his anti-war painting Guernica, which has become a symbol of the horrors of war around the world and especially of civilian casualties. The original painting, which is over three meters tall and 7 meters wide, can be seen in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain. However, you can see a LEGO rendition by Veronica Watson at the Legoland Discovery Center at the Ridge Hill megamall in Westchester, New York. In describing her LEGO work, she said:

“I was familiar with ‘Guernica’ before recreating it in Lego,” Watson tells Hyperallergic. “It is probably my favorite of Picasso’s Cubist works. This style used to represent the chaotic subject matter of the Spanish Civil War makes it an incredibly powerful piece in 1937 and in 2014. The most difficult aspect of making the Lego version was deciding how much detail to include. There is a lot going on in the painting. Rather than explicitly recreating every detail, I worked at suggesting the right forms so that the painting would be instantly recognizable.”