Picasso's Guernica arrives back home

September 11, 1981

Pablo Picasso's masterpiece "Guernica," depicting the horror of Spain's violent civil war arrived home Thursday in secrecy and under heavy guard after waiting 42 years in New York for the return of democracy to the painter's homeland.

Picasso painted the black and white record of the terror of a German Nazi air attack in 1937 while a refugee from the 1936-39 Civil War and deposited it with the New York Museum of Modern Art after Gen. Francisco Franco won the war. The painter, who was living in France, said it could not be returned to Spain until democracy was restored. The painting will be exhibited at the Prado Museum