An all-Lego brick recreation of Picasso’s Guernica created by Legoland Discovery Center Westchester’s Master Model Builder Veronica Watson (photo by Legoland Discovery Center Westchester)
Tomorrow would be Pablo Picasso’s 133rd birthday. Can you guess what we got him to mark this milestone? If you answered, “a replica of his gut-wrenching rendering of the bombing of a Spanish town made out of children’s building blocks,” you are correct!
The master builder-in-residence, Veronica Watson, of the Legoland Discovery Center at the Ridge Hill megamall in Westchester, New York, has crafted a Lego version of Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937).
An all-Lego brick recreation of Picasso’s Guernica created by Legoland Discovery Center Westchester’s Master Model Builder Veronica Watson (photo by Legoland Discovery Center Westchester)
“I was familiar with ‘Guernica’ before recreating it in Lego,” Watson tells Hyperallergic. “It is probably my favorite of Picasso’s Cubist works. This style used to represent the chaotic subject matter of the Spanish Civil War makes it an incredibly powerful piece in 1937 and in 2014. The most difficult aspect of making the Lego version was deciding how much detail to include. There is a lot going on in the painting. Rather than explicitly recreating every detail, I worked at suggesting the right forms so that the painting would be instantly recognizable.”
Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937) at the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (photo by hbp_pix /Flickr)
The bas-relief replica is considerably smaller than the 137.4-by-305.5-inch original, measuring just 14.5 inches across and 7 inches in height. While it took Picasso about a month to paint his gloomy antiwar masterpiece, which depicts the bombing of the titular Basque town by German and Italian forces on April 26, 1937, Watson created her version in under two days, using more than 800 Lego bricks.
What Picasso piece will you be making out of Legos tomorrow?
I won’t use legos, or copy Picasso, but I will make a Manzoni, the Sono Buoni kind.