Picasso at the Library

Currently on display through October 10 at the Main Library is "The Making of a Masterpiece: Picasso and Guernica." This small display located in the elevator lobby on the 4th floor is presented in conjunction with three other Picasso-related shows presently on view in San Francisco:

Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at the Contemporary Jewish Museum through September 6, 2011

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris at the de Young Museum through October 10, 2011

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde at SFMOMA through September 6, 2011

The Library's display features selections from its copy of a special limited edition Picasso publication which offers exact facsimiles of the drawings rendered by Picasso in preparation of his 1937 masterpiece "Guernica." Each drawing has been reproduced precisely in the same size and on the same kind of paper as the original. Insights into the artist's creative process are also presented.

This display is an abbreviated reprise of a display presented by the Art, Music Recreation Center in 2007.


The Library offers the following titles for those wishing to further research Picasso's "Guernica."


Guernica by Picasso: A Study of the Picture and its Contexts by Eberhard Fisch (Associated Universities Presses, 1988).

Guernica, Pablo Picasso by Juan Larrea (Arno Press, 1969).

Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon by Gijs Van Hensbergen (Bloomsbury, 2004).

Guernica: The Making of a Painting by Joaquin de la Puente (Silex, 1983).

Picasso-Gernika 70th Anniversary by Juan Pablo Fusi, et al (Ayuntamiento de Gernika-Lumo, 2007).

Picasso's 'Guernica' by Anthony Blunt (Oxford University, 1969).

Picasso's Guernica: History, Transformations, Meanings by Herschel Browning Chipp (University of California, 1988).

Picasso's Guernica: Illustrations, Introductory Essay, Documents, Poetry, Criticism, Analysis by Ellen C. Oppler (W.W. Norton, 1988).

Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece that Changed the World by Russell Martin (Dutton, 2002).