Known as ‘dragon’s blood’ to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the beautiful yet deadly ore cinnabar has been mined in the Spanish town of Almadén since Biblical times. Highly toxic when heated, cinnabar breaks down to produce the unique and mysterious metal we call mercury, a metal that is invaluable to science, medicine and industry.
For the 1937 World's exhibition in Paris, Alexander Calder created a mercury fountain to pay tribute to the people of Almadén, who suffered greatly at the hands of Franco's fascist troops during the Spanish Civil war. The deadly mercury flowed freely, with Picasso's vast Guernica painting as its backdrop.