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Spyros Mercouris, Special Advisor to Kids' Guernica
Spyros Mercouris inmidst of the children from the 108th Primary School of Athens at the Opening of the Kids' Guernica Exhibition
Spyros Mercouris Photo: Kostas Kartelias 2007
“Picasso, the giant in painting has been followed by many little giants”
As a special advisor to the Kids’ Guernica Project, or as it is officially called, the International Children’s Peace Mural Project, he would like to acknowledge what has been achieved so far.
Kids’ Guernica was first initiated by ART JAPAN in 1995 and has been connected to the famous 1937 Pablo Picasso painting that depicts the horrors of war during the bombing of the village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso is a giant. Giant of the arts, of painting, of sculpture, but also a giant of thought/ He could with his brush put on canvas all his artistic and political sentiments. Love, life, fear, death and barbarism. Guernica has become a symbol of the horror of war.
Children and young people are also small giants of art. They paint spontaneously what they feel without being intimidated by various outside influences. The imagination of children and of young people is fresh. They dream. They have visions. They feel and live intensely pain and joy. Their hands run freely to paint their truth. The result is fantastic. Full of colour and of expression. Children from Izmir and Chios painted together. They don’t want war, they want peace. The dialog between cultures starts with children.
This project is continuing, and as the ECCM Symposium recommends, European Capitals of Culture should host exhibitions of Kids’ Guernica murals. It would be good to have it in Istanbul, one of the three European Capitals of Culture in 2010 or for that matter in any other city with such designation. I think for Istanbul a proper venue for such an exhibition would be the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.
Spyros Mercouris, special advisor to Kids’ Guernica
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