In support of the war effort, French conceptual artist Jean Pierre Raynaud has responded to a proposal from Jannink Publishers to donate a never-before-seen work, a modern-day counterpart to Picasso's Guernica, to the Ukrainian people. The piece will be unveiled at the Sorbonne on February 24, 2023 and then exhibited in the museum chosen by the Ukrainian authorities when the day has come.

"Painting is an instrument of offensive and defensive warfare against the enemy."

- Pablo Picasso

Nearly a year after the beginning of the Russian invasion, Jean Pierre Raynaud, Jannink Editions, Sorbonne Artgallery and all those who accompany them, intend to join the coalition of artists who echo this conflict throughout the world. Art, more than anything else, can encourage the uprising of a collective power and the refusal of all resignation.

This initiative echoes President Volodymyr Zelensky's appeal at the Venice Biennale in April 2022, in which he urged European and international cultural and artistic actors to support Ukraine.

The unveiling of this new work will take place on February 24, 2023, in the main courtyard of the Panthéon Centre of the Sorbonne, temple of knowledge and European youth, in the presence of H.E. Ambassador Vadym Omelchenko, Christine Neau-Leduc, President of the University of Paris, and the artist himself.

Guernica, painted in 1937, is the universal symbol of the denunciation through art of the horrors of war. With this painting, which is more than seven metres long, Picasso not only paid a vibrant tribute to the victims, but above all made the whole world a witness to the Nazi exactions.

Jean-Pierre Raynaud has now taken the exact dimensions (3.49 m x 7.76 m) of this emblematic canvas to create a modern version according to his own aesthetic codes.

Closely linked to the French Nouveau Réalisme, Jean Pierre Raynaud is perfectly in line with Picasso's initial approach. Glacial and distant, his work reveals the absurdities of our relationship with the world by presenting the drama with an almost surgical distancing. Nothing is expressed, everything is shown.