20+ Knitters and Crochet Artists Stitch an Astonishing 3‑D Recreation of Picasso’s Guernica

Soft­ness is per­haps not the first qual­i­ty that springs to mind when one imag­ines recre­at­ing the chaos and anguish of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca in a 3‑dimensional rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Though how else to describe the pri­ma­ry medi­um of the urban knit­ting group Sul filo dell’arte?

More than 20 fiber artists worked for over a year, metic­u­lous­ly cro­chet­ing embroi­der­ing and knit­ting the most famil­iar ele­ments of the paint­ing as stand-alone fig­ures, to mark the eight­i­eth anniver­sary of the bomb­ing of the small Span­ish town depict­ed in the 1937 mas­ter­piece.

Stu­dents from the State Art School of the Roy­al Vil­la of Mon­za con­tributed the frame­works over which the fiber pieces were stretched.

The result, Guer­ni­ca 3D, was lat­er dis­played as part of Meta­mor­pho­sis, a Picas­so-themed exhi­bi­tion at the Roy­al Palace in Milan.

A look at Sul filo dell’arte’s Insta­gram page reveals that Picas­so is not the only artist to inspire their nee­dles. Fri­da Kahlo, Magritte, Kei­th Har­ing, Andy Warhol, and Vin­cent Van Gogh are among those to whom they have paid painstak­ing woolen trib­ute.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Guer­ni­ca So Shock­ing? An Ani­mat­ed Video Explores the Impact of Picasso’s Mon­u­men­tal Anti-War Mur­al

The Gestapo Points to Guer­ni­ca and Asks Picas­so, “Did You Do This?;” Picas­so Replies “No, You Did!”

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Cape-Cod­di­ties (1920) by Roger Liv­ingston Scaife. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.