Three Spanish boys who went to Paris and turned art upside down.
Picasso was born in Málaga, Miró in Barcelona and Dalí in Figueres. All three went to Paris and changed modern art. Each one did it in a completely different way.
Picasso could draw like an old master as a teenager. In Paris he broke faces and bottles into flat pieces: this is Cubism. Miró grew up in Barcelona and painted stars, birds and little signs that float like a dream. Dalí, from Figueres, painted melting clocks and tigers jumping out of a fish. He was a Surrealist and a showman with a famous moustache. Then came the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 German and Italian planes, helping Franco, bombed the Basque town of Gernika. Picasso answered with Guernica, a huge painting in black, white and grey. He refused to live in Spain under Franco and never went back. Dalí did return, and openly praised the dictator. Many people never forgave him.
Pick a colour to follow one story. Every moment shows where you can still see it.
Pablo Picasso is born on 25 October in Málaga. His father is a painter and art teacher.
See it at: Museo Casa Natal PicassoThe Picasso family moves to Barcelona. Pablo, just 14, starts at the city's art school.
See it at: Museu PicassoPicasso settles in Paris, in an old, cold studio building called the Bateau-Lavoir. In the same year, Salvador Dalí is born in Figueres.
Picasso paints five women with faces like masks. Even his friends are shocked. It opens the road to Cubism.
See it at: Museum of Modern Art, New YorkJoan Miró paints The Farm, his family's farm in Mont-roig, with every leaf and snail. The young writer Ernest Hemingway buys it.
See it at: National Gallery of Art, WashingtonIn Cadaqués, Dalí meets Gala, a Russian woman married to a French poet. She becomes his wife, his model and his manager.
See it at: Castell Gala Dalí de PúbolOn 26 April, planes bomb Gernika on market day. In about five weeks Picasso paints Guernica for the Spanish pavilion at the Paris world fair.
See it at: Museo Reina SofíaDalí turns the burnt-out theatre of his home town into a museum. The roof is crowned with giant eggs.
See it at: Teatre-Museu DalíThe Fundació Joan Miró opens on Montjuïc hill in Barcelona, in a white building by his friend Josep Lluís Sert.
See it at: Fundació Joan MiróPicasso wanted Guernica to go to Spain only when the country was free again. Six years after Franco's death, it arrives in Madrid.
See it at: Museo Reina SofíaThe museums and places where this story comes alive.
Home of Guernica, usually on the second floor. Stand back first, then come close and find the broken sword and the small flower.
A great place to see all three in one visit. Look for Dalí's dream with tigers jumping out of a fish and an elephant on spider legs.
Picasso's own family gave many of these works. In the basement you can see walls from the ancient Phoenician town.
Bright colours, big tapestries and a roof terrace with sculptures. Don't miss Calder's mercury fountain: it stood next to Guernica in Paris in 1937.
A red building with eggs on the roof and bread rolls on the walls. Inside, Dalí's jokes are everywhere.
A museum about the 1937 bombing and about peace. In the town, look for a full-size tile copy of Picasso's painting on a street wall.
He was born in Málaga in 1881. Today you can visit the house.
On 26 April 1937, German and Italian planes bombed the town on market day.
The sofa is shaped like lips. Look through the lens and the whole face appears.