Title: What's behind the U.N. cover-up of Picasso's Guernica?
Headings: Hidden Treasures
Hidden Treasures
What’s so controversial about Picasso’s Guernica?
The tapestry in question

Content: Lack of specificity makes the image more potent and more tame. Advertisement
While at MoMA, the mural became the focus of intense political activism. Commenting on the natural home for the painting, Picasso had said in 1956, “It will do the most good in America.” In 1967, however, 400 artists responding to the Vietnam War signed a petition urging Picasso to take it out of the country: “ Please let the spirit of your painting be reasserted and its message once again felt, by withdrawing your painting from the United States for the duration of the war.” The liberal art historian Meyer Schapiro viewed this as nonsensical political posturing. In a letter to the Art Workers Coalition in 1970 he asked if MoMA was making a protest against the crucifixion by hanging paintings of that subject, and by implication, wondered why Franco was so keen to have Guernica in the Prado, if hanging it implied criticism of all warfare. Advertisement
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Not long after, in 1974, Tony Shafrazi, a young Iranian artist (and later a trendy SoHo dealer) sprayed the words “Kill Lies All” onto the picture, as a protest against U.S. action at My Lai. ( The canvas was well-varnished so his paint cleaned off with ease.) A self-proclaimed Guerrilla Art Action Group came to the defense of Shafrazi, arguing that he was completing, not vandalizing, Picasso’s creation.