A modern-day Guernica: Shazia’Ayn Babul’s pastel drawing uses Picasso’s recognizable cubist forms and borrows some of the figures from his painting
By kevin Griffin for Vancouver Sun – November 26, 2015 — A 17-year-old high school student is hoping her art work, inspired by Pablo Picasso’s antiwar painting Guernica, will help Canadians see the humanity in the plight of Syrian refugees.
Shazia’Ayn Babul’s pastel drawing uses Picasso’s recognizable cubist forms and borrows some of the figures from his painting, including the powerful image of a grieving woman holding her dying child.
“I felt something needed to be done to bring to the attention of the world the suffering of the people in Syria … I think it needs that human connection — like what Picasso did for war in Guernica.”
Babul’s drawing is in an exhibition of work by 14 Ismaili Muslim artists at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Vancouver. Called Odyssey: Past and Present, the exhibition continues until Tuesday, Dec. 1.
Babul, a Grade 12 student at Sentinel Secondary School in West Vancouver, was introduced to Guernica about a year ago after her father visited Spain and brought back a poster of Picasso’s painting. It now hangs in her bedroom.
More at the Source: Vancouver Sun
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