The Alicante exhibit presents a bold meditation on Picasso through the eyes of Pierre d’Argyll, a Paris-born artist who channels the spirit of the maestro in a project titled Art with Neurons. The installation recreates a version of Picasso’s Guernica with the same monumental scale, split into pieces and arranged as if the brain itself were a gallery. Viewers can witness this neurological homage in the Hall of La Lonja in Alicante, where the show remains on display through late October, inviting contemplation about memory, trauma, and the power of art to house human history within its lines.
Organized by the city of Alicante, the exhibition brings together twenty four distinct works that echo the composition and gravitas of Guernica while reframing it as an inquiry into the brain and the working of creativity. The show is also a memorial in name and in intention, inviting audiences to reflect on peace and the enduring resonance of Picasso’s large canvas as a cultural touchstone. The scale of the piece, measured at three point four nine by seven point seven seven meters, anchors the room much as Guernica anchors the memory of catastrophe in modern art. It is a carefully plotted dialogue between past and present, between a master’s monumental vision and a contemporary artist’s neurological approach to form and meaning.
Through this work, d’Argyll extends his homage beyond simple replication. He embeds elements from Picasso’s iconography into a neural framework, making the brain itself the stage where classic symbols—figures, horses, and the famed bull—emerge from a tangle of neural networks. The artist’s practice complicates the act of looking, inviting viewers to consider how memory and perception shape the way a masterpiece is understood. The exhibition foregrounds Paris and New York as focal points of Picasso’s life and career, positioning the two cities as cultural continents that helped mold the artist’s vision and influence. In this context, the show becomes a map of creative pilgrimage, tracing the artist’s interactions with major capitals while translating them into an intimate investigation of the human mind and artistic creation.
Within the curatorial discourse, a member of the Cultural Council notes that Pierre d’Argyll’s artistry reveals how the brain organizes and reconfigures the structures of visual memory. The observer describes the project as offering a fresh perspective or perhaps an unusual vantage point, making the exhibited pieces compelling stops for anyone drawn to the dialogue between neuroscience and aesthetics. The remarks underscore the show’s aim to spark curiosity about how creative processes unfold inside the brain and how that inner activity manifests on canvas and installation space alike.
In Picasso’s Head
In keeping with his broader interest in art and brain research, d’Argyll centers his gaze on Picasso with a focus that treats Guernica as if it could be imagined inside the Malaga artist’s mind. The project imagines how Picasso might reinterpret his own masterpiece by revisiting it through the lens of neural activity, a provocative idea that reframes a familiar image as a living brain map. Just as Picasso studied the works of predecessors and contemporaries, the contemporary painter invites other creators to explore similar routes of invention and recollection. And yet the intrigue here lies in the method: the use of neuroaesthetics as a way to probe self-understanding through artistic practice. The result is a curious blend of scientific curiosity and artistic intuition, a hybrid approach that challenges conventional boundaries between disciplines and disciplines between the artist and the brain.
Evidence of the artist’s admiration for Picasso appears in a notable 2018 series that revisits the Malaga painter through a focused study on a solitary brain motif. That series turns the brain into a stage where the elements of Guernica—such as the iconic figures of the bull, the horse, the grieving mother, and the screaming figure with raised arms—are reimagined within a neuroaesthetic framework. By translating the monumental canvas into a giant brain sculpture or installation, d’Argyll honors Picasso’s legacy while inviting new audiences to contemplate how a master’s legacy can be reinterpreted through modern scientific and artistic methods. This approach underscores the artist’s belief that the act of thinking about art can deepen the experience of viewing it, providing fresh routes into a timeless work and into the broader history of 20th century painting.