The Madrid-based artist takes Picasso's Guernica, a universal symbol against war, to create a unique work that rethinks the conflict from a multi-sensory experience and contemporary perspective.
Carlos Blanco Artero's work is fascinating in its reflection and creative process. It is a perpetual dance between colors, compositions, textures, lines, volumes and depth. Art, in all its forms and representations, has had a considerable impact on his approach over the years. Pablo Picasso's at the head of the procession. It was at the age of six that the Madrid-born artist discovered one of his most famous works, Guernica (1937), in a museum, and at nine that he organized his first art exhibition at General Motors in Zaragoza. Since then, Carlos Blanco Artero's career has been punctuated by major inspirations and world travels (Paris, New York, Berlin, Austria, Australia, the Canaries), which have nurtured his style marked by abstraction, new figuration and figurative destructuralism.
The influence of masters
In series such as Fiesta, Iptics, Crowds, Meninas and Arabesque, he draws on the work of artists from a wide range of fields and currents: Gustave Courbet(Le Désespéré), George Condo(Rush Hour), Diego Velázquez(Les Ménines), Francis Picabia(I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie) and Claude Debussy.
From these tutelary and inspirational figures, however, the spectre of the Cubist maestro remains central to most of his works. Carlos Blanco Artero's reinterpretation of Guernica offers a dialogue between past and present, probing themes of memory, conflict and collective perception.
From the outset, he planned to reproduce it in approximately the same size and over the same period of time. " I wanted to feel the sensation of facing a canvas of similar dimensions," he explains. Conceived in eleven different tones, from white to black, with effects of focus and blur, his monumental work aims to be "close without being obvious", offering a new take on Cubism.
Rethinking Guernica
His bold vision is also multidisciplinary, inviting the public to explore Picasso's work interactively on the digital platform Repensar Guernica at Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum. Carlos Blanco Artero's painting goes beyond its pictorial framework for a multisensory experience, borrowing from sound and elements of artistic synesthesia. " I wanted the experience not just to be visual, but for the viewer to feel and hear the chaos and fragility that Guernica represents," he explains.
En 2025, l’œuvre prend ses quartiers dans les installations permanentes de Saisho, galerie et marché de l’art de la capitale espagnole. « Ce qui m’a toujours intéressé dans Guernica, c’est sa plasticité, son excellente composition géométrique, sa conception presque comme un triptyque, les mains et les pieds, les gestes de douleur, c’est un cri déchirant qui est accentué par tous les plans et bords géométriques nets ; noir et blanc, qui, comme le dit Picasso, le fait “ressembler à une grande gravure” et lui donne une immortalité dramatique. »
This reinterpretation reaffirms Carlos Blanco Artero's commitment to transforming art into a tool for dialogue and social change.
