Dear Neil,
Invitation to join the debate
Among the Whitechapel Gallery’s inaugural exhibitions is a commission by Goshka Macuga. Her installation revolves around an event where Picasso’s original painting, Guernica, was installed at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1939.
Guernica was brought over by the Stepney Trade Union Council who approached the gallery for help with their ambition to fight Fascism and to promote a Communist spirit within the working classes. They wanted to use a painting by ‘a famous Spanish painter’ to help enlist volunteers for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.