Picasso & the bitter legacy of terror attack

Thomas Rogers

Walking through Oslo’s government quarter, it’s hard to miss the monumental concrete mural that dominates its central square. The semiabstract depiction of three people on a boat, pulling in a catch under a blazing sun, is on the end of a swooping modernist building known as Y-block. The Fishermen bears the unmistakable lines of the artist who designed it: Pablo Picasso, who created it in 1970, in collaboration with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar.

In the last six years, however, both the building and the mural have been in a grim state of uncertainty. Since July 22, 2011, Y-block and an adjacent building, known as H-block, have sat largely empty, their windows boarded up or covered by screens, a ghostly reminder of the car-bomb attack that tore through the government quarter, killing eight people.

To the outrage of preservationists, architects and politicians, the Norwegian government has decided to follow through on plans to demolish Y-block and relocate The Fishermen and another of Picasso and Nesjar’s murals. Statsbygg, the Norwegian state property directorate, said in September that it would award a contract to redesign the quarter to a group of several high-profile architecture firms who, in accordance with government wishes, will replace Y-block with a triangular building with a semi-transparent facade and erect a row of offices along one edge of the site. Opponents of the decision see it as an affront to Norwegian and global artistic heritage, and a capitulation to Breivik.

“We don’t want the ministry to tear down the building when the terrorist didn’t manage to do that,” says Janne Wilberg, the city of Oslo’s director of cultural heritage. Other opponents of the ministry’s plan argue that, heritage issues aside, it will leave the district with too much office space, overwhelming Oslo’s historic city core. Ola Elvestuen, member of the Norwegian parliament for Liberal Party, says, “They’re trying to build too many too large buildings in too small of an area.” He plans to fight the proposal in parliament, aiming to preserve Y-block and its Picassos in their original locations.

“This is our near past,” he says, “and the near past is often the hardest to preserve.”  — The Independent