• One year after its sudden and disconcerting disappearance from a wall at the United Nations, a vast tapestry representing Pablo Picasso’s iconic ‘Guernica’ has been returned by owners the Rockefeller family to its prominent place at the global body.

• The tapestry of the painting, woven by Atelier J. de la Baume-Durrbach, was rehung outside the Security Council. 

• The tapestry was commissioned in 1955 by former US Vice President and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and offered to the UN on loan in 1984.

• The tapestry was woven in a French studio in consultation with Picasso, who did his original ‘Guernica’ painting during the Spanish Civil War. It represents the bombardment of the Spanish city of that name on April 26, 1937 by German Nazi and Italian fascist forces.

• ‘Guernica’ is considered by numerous art critics as perhaps the most powerful anti-war painting in history.

• The Guernica tapestry with its probing symbolism — its depiction of horrific aspects of human nature — wrestles with the cruelty, darkness, and also a seed of hope within humanity. 

• On loan to the UN by the Rockefellers, the tapestry was meant to serve as a powerful reminder to UN diplomats of the horrors of war. Screaming women, a dead baby and a dismembered soldier are rendered in ominous shades of brown and black.

• When the United Nations headquarters was undergoing a major renovation starting in 2009, the tapestry was returned to the Rockefeller Foundation for safekeeping. It was reinstalled in September 2013 when the renovations were completed.

• Early last year, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Jr., the son of the late Vice President and governor who owns the Guernica tapestry, notified the United Nations of his intention to retrieve it. The UN returned it to him in February 2021.

• Rockefeller said in a statement that the tapestry was being returned on loan to the United Nations, and he intends to donate the work to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the future.

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