Completed Drupal site or project URL: http://guernica.museoreinasofia.es/enExplore one of the twentieth century's most charismatic artworks using Drupal 8

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the most important institution of modern and contemporary art in Spain and internationally, contracted Biko to develop an ambitious project around Picasso's most charismatic artwork.

Located in the center of Madrid, it is a must see for tourists, art lovers and scholars. Its collection is intrinsically linked by history and time and perhaps its most iconic work is Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

To talk about Guernica is to talk about Spain’s most iconic 20th century work of art. Its life is intertwined with the history of Spain and of the world, from its creation in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, through its travels around the world, to its return to Spain after the transition to democracy.

What challenge did we take on?

The Museo Reina Sofia was conducting the most ambitious research that had ever been carried out about Guernica:

• A comprehensive collection of all the documents that could be found related to the painting and its history.
• The largest study of high-resolution images that has ever been carried out on a painting.

How could we take advantage of the online medium to create a digital product that would live up to expectations? That was the challenge that we faced, and which has kept us motivated from then until the launching of the site.

What did we do?

Our first challenge was to give form to the project, so we started with a joint definition phase with the researchers and those responsible at the Museum.

The results of this phase showed the need for a site structured in three sections:

• Documentary archive, where site visitors can consult everything from the letters to Picasso commissioning the painting, to the photos of its arrival in Spain in 1981. A powerful search engine encourages the exploration of stories that explain the history of Guernica and provides additional information about its protagonists.
• Chronology, through which the entire catalog of documentation can be explored using a spectacular interactive display.
• Gigapixel, a technology that allows any user to discover Guernica from a perspective that was unthinkable before. The largest image of an artwork ever captured offers the possibility of studying the painting with natural, ultraviolet or infrared light, and X-rays.