A full-size tapestry replica of Picasso's Guernica, a howl of rage at the bombing of a small Spanish town which has become one of the most famous anti-war images in the world, is coming on loan from the United Nations building in New York for the re-opening exhibition of the Whitechapel Gallery in London.
The tapestry itself became embroiled in controversy just before the outbreak of the Iraq war, in February 2003, when it was covered with a curtain before Colin Powell, the then US secretary of state, addressed the UN.
At the time it was claimed this was to provide a less distracting backdrop for film and photographs but it was reported that the real reason was the panic of his advisers at the thought of Powell being recorded in front of such a famous piece of pacifist propaganda.
The original painting, which Picasso created in 1937 within weeks of the bombing and the death of hundreds of civilians in Guernica, toured the world raising awareness of the horrors of the Spanish civil war. It is now at the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, and too fragile to travel.
But the Art Newspaper will confirm tomorrow that Margaretta Rockefeller, who owns the replica tapestry commissioned by her late husband Norman Rockefeller, and had placed it on long loan at the UN, has agreed to the unique loan to London.
When the gallery reopens in April, after a £13.5m re-development, the tapestry will be the centrepiece of an installation by the German sculptor Goshka Macuga, celebrating the now almost forgotten fact that the original painting was displayed at the Whitechapel gallery in 1939, the only time it was seen in Britain.