A 3D Exploration of Picasso’s Guernica by Lena Gieseke

Artist Lena Gieseke has created a haunting, meditative 3D exploration of Guernica – Pablo Picasso’s monumental 1937 painting in response to the Nazi bombing of Guernica during the Spanish civil war. Using Maya, Shake and Photoshop, Gieseke separated the individual elements of the mural, and then moved her 3D camera through the resulting tableau. The idea of using spatial immersion as a means to prompt deep contemplation of a painting was inspired by jigsaw puzzles:

The idea of creating a 3D version of an influential artwork came out of doing jigsaw puzzles of famous paintings. When you assemble a jigsaw, you study a painting in great detail and you become aware of the very lines, shapes and colors that the painting is composed of and how these elements merge to create a unified expression. Through the puzzle, you explore the artwork, examining details your eye might not have caught otherwise. Your experience of the painting is intense, aroused by the action of puzzling, but expanded and strengthened by your own fantasy.