When Iberia Brought Picasso’s ”Guernica” to Spain 40 Years Ago

• The painting hung at the New York Museum of Modern Art for more than four decades until it was flown from JFK to Madrid-Barajas airport on Iberia flight 0952.

• None of the 319 passengers or 19 crew members knew that the emblematic painting was aboard the flight, which arrived in Madrid at 05:27 h of 10 September 1981.

• The 7.77m x 3.49m oil painting had been rolled up and packed in a wooden crate for shipment in Iberia’s 404-seat Lope de Vega (EC-DLD), a Boeing 747 “Jumbo”.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the flight of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s painting “Guernica” from New York to Madrid. The painting, depicting the bombing civilians by German aircraft of civilians in the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, had been commissioned by the government of the Spanish Republic for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris, where the artist was living. The 1936-1939 war was raging at the time.

In 1940 the painting was sent to the United States to raise funds for Spanish refugees following the victory of General Franco in the Civil War, and it ended up in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Picasso, who died in 1973, had expressly forbidden its showing in Spain until democracy was restored there, which did not occur until after Franco’s death in 1975. After hanging for more than four decades in the MoMA, the painting was shipped to Spain on 9 September 1981 on a regular Iberia flight from JFK to Madrid, where it arrived the next morning.

None of the 319 passengers or the 19 crew members knew the painting was aboard. The pilot, Captain Juan López Durán, informed them after landing: “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Madrid. I want to tell you that you have been accompanied on this flight by Picasso’s Guernica for its arrival in Spain for the first time.”

The painting, 7.77m long and 3.49m high, had been rolled up and enclosed in a wooden crate for shipment in the cargo hold ot Iberia’s Lope de Vega (EC-DLD), a 404-seat Boeing 747 “Jumbo”. Iberia retired the last of its 747 fleet in 2006.

The painting was taken to be hung in the Casón del Buen Retiro, an outbuilding of Madrid’s Prado Museum, where it remained until 1992, when it was moved to the new Reina Sofia national museum of modern art, where it can be seen today.