the essential
At the Gers departmental archives, a work by the visual artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud, inspired by Picasso's painting Guernica, is presented for a month.
An exhibition entitled “Guernica / Ukraine” is on offer at the Gers departmental archives, from Wednesday December 4 until January 9.
At the 2022 Venice Biennale, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged artists around the world to support Ukraine.
Jannink Editions responded to this call by asking the visual artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud to create a new work that would be given to Ukraine. Jean Pierre Raynaud, born in 1939, a world-famous artist, began his research close to the New Realists movement and Pop artists to develop a language made of signs and signals, the most representative being the prohibited meaning sign.
Like Picasso's Guernica (1937), Jean-Pierre Raynaud took the exact dimensions (3.49 mx 7.76 m) of this emblematic work. Like the Spanish painter's canvas, “Untitled – Ukraine” denounces through art the horrors of war and becomes a timeless allegory for peace. The symbolism embodied by the signage not only allows us to escape any contextualization, but also to universally and brutally designate the obstacle to freedom presented by war, violence and barbarism.
The work on tour
The exhibition was inaugurated Tuesday evening at the Gers departmental archives. The work consists of a life-size reproduction of Guernica, opposite the creation of Jean-Pierre Raynaud.
After being unveiled in February 2023 at the Sorbonne, the work began a tour. The two monumental canvases were exhibited at the contemporary art fair in Strasbourg ST-ART from November 24 to 26, 2023. The following stages were the City of Schiltigheim from January 23 to February 16, 2024 then the Council of Europe from February 22 to March 23, 2024. They were then shown at the Hôtel de Région in Strasbourg from June 20 to July 12 and in Châlons-en-Champagne from September 12 to October 8, 2024.
It is now in Auch in the Gers that the two paintings are located, for a period of one month, at the initiative of the departmental council.
They will be visible from Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. During the end-of-year holidays, the showroom will remain open. The visit is free.
