GUERNICARTAS
 -It is Art, isn't it?-

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The subtitle discloses a small dilemma that was discussed here before chosing this deck for this xpo. You'll soon see why.

The deck on xpo here was made and published as "Guernicartas" by I. Gabaldon from Moroles, Spain, in 1988 in a limited and numbered edition of 100 copies. It consists of 52 cards and 2 jokers. The deck is printed in black and white on regular thin carton; the backs are plain white. It has english indices and french suitcolours, so it's suitable for all games, but comes with a leaflet in Spanish, that has rules for a special game that aims to create the complete "Guernica" by Pablo Picasso with these cards. 

So with this deck the maker "borrows" another artist's work and is not the actual artist himself. His only creativity lies in the fact that he's found a way to divide a copy of an original artwork in 54 rectangular pieces and turn these into playing cards.
And this is not even a novelty. Some ten years before this publication the Belgian artist  Pry had drawn a picture of a circus, cut that up into 55 pieces and made a deck of cards from them, that he published in a limited and numbered edition.  But at least he used his own artwork.

When I found this deck, I immediately recognized the artwork when I saw the first card. The King of Hearts was on top and in a split second I saw the complete painting that had impressed me so much in my youth. So to show you an example of these kind of art decks we have chosen this one over the Pry one.

To better understand this masterpiece by Pablo Picasso, one must know a just little bit more about its background and history.............

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ARTHOME or ARCHIVES