La Mia Guernika Mural, new work created by Tano Pisano

June 24 – September 24, 2023

There are all the horrors of our times – from migrants to violence against minors, from wars to arms trafficking – La Mia Guernika, the new work created by Tano Pisano, an artist from Sicily by birth and from Versilia by adoption visible from 24 June to 24 September on the external wall of the monumental complex of Sant’Agostino, in the street of the same name, in Pietrasanta.

THE WORK

The artist ‘s tribute to Pablo Picasso 50 years after his death – was inaugurated on June 24 in the presence of the Mayor of Pietrasanta, Alberto Stefano Giovannetti who said “Art is a great messenger of peace. It creates unthinkable bonds and collaborations, unites distant places, speaks a universal language. Pietrasanta, which has art in its DNA, could only welcome the idea of its honorary citizen, Maestro Tano Pisano, with deep gratitude and sincere participation: to pay homage to Pablo Picasso, the authentic genius of the twentieth century, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death but, above all, to give a new voice to his cry of resistance against all war, of peace and of hope”.

Tano Pisano’s Guernika is a mural painted on 12 Plexiglas panels (mounted on a wooden structure anchored to another metal one designed not to damage the wall), which measures six meters wide by two meters high, always visible, for free.

The link between Guernica – Picasso’s masterpiece kept at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid – and Tano Pisano‘s new creation is clear: “It’s my version of Guernica – says the Artist – because three months ago I was in Mougins, France, where the artist died, and I wanted to pay homage to him in that country. I started painting the work in Pietrasanta and when the Mayor knew what I was working on he wanted the mural to be shown first in Pietrasanta once it was finished. We have found a compromise, whereby the work is presented for the first time here and in 2024 I will have a major exhibition in the Mougins Monumentale (exhibition in the streets, squares and in the landscape). La Mia Guernika is also the reinterpretation of the horse from The Triumph of Death, the fifteenth-century detached fresco visible in Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, which also inspired Picasso. In my work there are many stories – explains Tano Pisano – migrants and the sea, war, the problem of dying children, bombs and, as Picasso said, the ‘cries of children, cries of women, cries of birds, cries of flowers…’ that is, the total cry of violence. For example, I painted the death’s head looking at the self-portrait that Picasso made before he died. Among other things, this work is linked to ‘L’urlo’, the exhibition that has just opened in my Pietrasanta gallery in Via Barsanti, which is a tribute to Charles Rivel, the Catalan clown who at the end of each of his shows screamed at the oppression and the dictatorship of Generalissimo Franco”.

However, in Tano Pisano’s work there is a distinctive element compared to Picasso’s masterpiece: “Despite the dramatic nature of the images – he says -, I tried to give a note of hope by working with color. And in the end the work is even cheerful. And while we were editing it, we already registered the public’s appreciation, because in the end everyone looks at the work with his eyes and with his feelings”.

On the external wall of the monumental complex of Sant’Agostino, in the street of the same name, in Pietrasanta.