Guernica is a large 1937 oil painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.Richardson (2016)Picasso, Pablo. Guernica. Museo Reina Sofía. (Retrieved 2017-09-07.) It is one of his best-known works, regarded by many art critics as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history. It is exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
The grey, black, and white painting, done on a canvas tall and across, portrays the suffering wrought by violence and chaos. Prominently featured in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, screaming women, a dead baby, a dismembered soldier, and flames.
Picasso painted Guernica at his home in Paris in response to the 26 April 1937 bombing of Guernica, a town in the Basque Country in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany's Condor Legion and the fascist government of Italy. Upon completion, Guernica was exhibited at the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition and then at other venues around the world. The touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief. The painting soon became widely acclaimed, helping to bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War that took place from 1936 to 1939.
Commission In January 1937, while Pablo Picasso was living in Paris on Rue des Grands Augustins, he was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to create a large artwork for the Spanish pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, a 1937 Paris International Exposition. Picasso, who had last visited Spain in 1934 and would never return, was the Honorary Director-in-Exile of the Prado Museum.
Picasso worked somewhat dispassionately from January until late April on the project's initial sketches, which depicted his perennial theme of an artist's studio. Then, immediately upon hearing reports of the 26 April bombing of Guernica, poet Juan Larrea visited Picasso's home to urge him to make the bombing his subject. Days later, on 1 May, Picasso read George Steer's eyewitness account of the attack, which originally had been published in both The Times and The New York Times on 28 April, and abandoned his initial idea. Acting on Larrea's suggestion, Picasso began sketching a series of preliminary drawings for Guernica.Preston, Paul (2012) The Destruction of Guernica. HarperCollins At Google Books. Retrieved 18 July 2013.
Historical context
Bombing of 26 April 1937
On 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the town of Guernica was razed to the ground by German aircraft belonging to the Condor Legion, sent by Adolf Hitler to support General Francisco Franco's troops. Bombs rained down on Guernica for hours in an "experiment" for the Blitzkrieg tactics and bombing of civilians seen in later wars.
During the civil war the Republican forces, made up of communists, socialists, anarchists, and others with differing goals, united in their opposition to the Nationalists, led by Franco, who wanted to establish a fascist dictatorship. The Nationalists perceived Guernica, a quiet Basque Country village in the province of Biscay, as the northern bastion of the Republican resistance movement and the center of Basque culture.Arhheim, (1973) p. ???
On Monday, 26 April 1937, Nazi Germany's warplanes, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours.Ray (2006), 168–171. In his 26 April 1937 diary entry, Richthofen states that the town was targeted "...to halt and disrupt the Red withdrawal which has to pass through here." The following day, he wrote in his diary, "Guernica burning".Beevor (2006), 233. In Richthofen's 30 April 1937 journal entry, he noted that when the squadron arrived "there was smoke everywhere" from the attack by three aircraft, and since nobody could see the roads, bridges, and suburbs "they just dropped everything right into the center. The 250s toppled a number of houses and destroyed the water mains. The incendiaries now could spread and become effective. The materials of the houses: tile roofs, wooden porches, and half-timbering resulted in complete annihilation."Quoted in Oppler (1988), p. 166.
Since Monday was Guernica's market day, and most of its men were away fighting on behalf of the Republicans, at the time of the bombing the town was populated mostly by women and children,Preston (2007). 12–19. and many of them congregated in the center of town. When the main bombardment began the roads were already full of debris and the bridges leading out of town were destroyed. The residents were unable to escape.
Guernica was 10 kilometers from the front lines, and in-between the front lines and Bilbao. A Republican retreat towards Bilbao, or an advance towards it, had to pass through Guernica.Beevor (2006), 231 The nearest military target, a war product factory on the town's outskirts, went through the attack unscathed, so the attack was widely condemned as a terror bombing.Saul, Toby (8 May 2018). "The horrible inspiration behind one of Picasso's great works". nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved 21 May 2019.Overy, Richard (2013). The Bombing War: Europe, 1939-1945. Penguin UK. p. ix. .
Aftermath
The Times journalist George Steer propelled this event onto the international scene, and brought it to Pablo Picasso's attention, in an eyewitness account published on 28 April in both The Times and The New York Times. On the 29th it appeared in L'Humanité. Steer wrote:
Picasso lived in Paris during its World War II German occupation. A widely repeated story is that a German officer saw a photo of Guernica in Picasso's apartment and asked, "Did you do that?", and Picasso responded, "No, you did."
Referring to Picasso's painting, art theorist Rudolf Arnheim writes:
Creation, and the influence of Dora Maar on the painting
Dora Maar found a large enough studio for Picasso to paint Guernica in. Through her connections in the left-wing community, she gained access to a space on Rue des Grands-Augustins, near Notre-Dame. This building had previously served as the headquarters of the ‘Contre-Attaque’ group, of which Maar was a dedicated member. Having listened to anti-fascist speeches there, she recognized it as the ideal location for Picasso's monumental protest artwork. Not only did she find the studio large enough for Picasso to paint Guernica in, she also had exclusive access to photograph the work in progress.
“Maar’s practice of photography influenced the art of Picasso – she had a great influence on his work,” said Antoine Romand, a Dora Maar expert. “She contested him. She pushed him to do something new and to be more creative politically. Some argue that Picasso borrowed from Maar's photographic oeuvre by painting Guernica in stark black and white, which was a departure from his usual colorful style. At Picasso’s request, Maar painted part of the dying horse in Guernica. Maar accompanied Picasso in the studio, giving her the opportunity to observe each phase of Guernica’s creation over 36 days. While Picasso painted, she took photographs, turning Picasso into her photographic subject.
Painting process Guernica was painted using a matte house paint specially formulated at Picasso's request to have the least possible gloss. American artist John Ferren assisted him in preparing the monumental canvas,John Ferren biography, guggenheim.org. Retrieved 17 November 2020. and photographer Dora Maar, who had been working with Picasso since mid-1936 photographing his studio and teaching him the technique of cameraless photography,Fluegel (1980), p. 308. documented its creation. Apart from their documentary and publicity value, Maar's photographs "helped Picasso to eschew color and give the work the black-and-white immediacy of a photograph", according to art historian John Richardson.
Picasso, who rarely allowed strangers into his studio to watch him work, admitted influential visitors to observe his progress on Guernica, believing that the publicity would help the antifascist cause. As his work on the mural progressed, Picasso explained: "The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death."Tóibín (2006).
Picasso worked on the painting for 35 days, and finished it on 4 June 1937.
Composition
The scene occurs within a large room. On the left, a wide-eyed bull, with a tail suggesting rising flame and smoke as if seen through a window, stands over a grieving woman holding a dead child in her arms. The woman's head is thrown back and her mouth is wide open. A horse falls in agony in the center of the room, with a large gaping hole in its side, as if it had just been run through by a spear or javelin. The horse appears to be wearing chain mail armor, decorated with vertical tally marks arranged in rows.
A dead and dismembered soldier lies under the horse. The hand of his severed right arm grasps a shattered sword, from which a flower grows. The open palm of his left hand contains a stigma, a symbol of martyrdom derived from the stigmata of Christ. A bare light bulb in the shape of an all-seeing eye blazes over the suffering horse's head.
To the horse's upper right a frightened woman's head and extended right arm reach through a window. As she witnesses the scene she carries a flame-lit lamp in her right hand, and holds it near the bare bulb. Below her a woman in shock staggers from the right towards the center while looking into the blazing light bulb with a blank stare.
Daggers that suggest screaming have replaced the tongues of the horse, the bull, and the grieving woman. To the bull's right a dove appears on a cracked wall through which bright light from the outside shines.
On the far right of the room there is a fourth woman, her arms raised in terror. Her wide-open mouth and thrown back head echo the grieving woman's. She is entrapped by fire from above and below, her right hand suggesting the shape of an airplane.
A dark wall with an open door defines the right side of the room.
A "hidden" image formed by the horse appears in Guernica: the horse's nostrils and upper teeth can be seen as a human skull facing left and slightly downward.
Another hidden image is of a bull that appears to gore the horse from underneath. The bull's head is formed mainly by the horse's entire front leg which has the knee on the ground. The leg's knee-cap forms the head's nose. A horn appears within the horse's breast.
Symbolism and interpretations Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another. This extends, for example, to the mural's two dominant elements: the bull and the horse. Art historian Patricia Failing said, "The bull and the horse are important characters in Spanish culture. Picasso himself certainly used these characters to play many different roles over time. This has made the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the bull and the horse very tough. Their relationship is a kind of ballet that was conceived in a variety of ways throughout Picasso's career."
When pressed to explain the elements in Guernica, Picasso said,
In The Dream and Lie of Franco, a series of narrative sketches Picasso also created for the World's Fair, Franco is depicted as a monster that first devours his own horse and later does battle with an angry bull. Work on these illustrations began before the bombing of Guernica, and four additional panels were added, three of which relate directly to the Guernica mural.