Guernica (Picasso)

Guernica (; ) is a large 1937 oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. 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, which is tall and across, portrays the suffering of humans and ungulates wrought by violence and chaos. Prominent in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, screaming women, death, dismemberment, and flames.
Picasso painted "Guernica" at his home in Paris in response to the 26 April, 1937, bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain which was bombed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, "Guernica" was exhibited at the Spanish display 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 famous and widely acclaimed, and it helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War.
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 mural for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair. 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".
Historical context.
Bombing of 26 April 1937.
During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican forces were made up of assorted factions such as communists, socialists, anarchists, and others with differing goals. Yet they were united in their opposition to the Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, who sought a return to pre-Republican Spain based on law, order, and traditional Catholic values.
Guernica, a town in the province of Biscay in Basque Country, was seen as the northern bastion of the Republican resistance movement and the center of Basque culture. This added to its significance as a target. Around 4:30 p.m. on Monday, 26 April 1937, warplanes of the Nazi Germany Condor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours. In his journal for 30 April 1937, von Richthofen wrote:
Other accounts state that since it was Guernica's market day, its inhabitants were congregated in the center of town. When the bombardment began they were unable to escape because the roads were full of debris and the bridges leading out of town had been destroyed.
Guernica was a quiet village 10 kilometers from the front lines, and in-between the front lines and Bilbao, the capital of Bizkaia (Biscay). But any Republican retreat towards Bilbao, or any Nationalist advance towards Bilbao, had to pass through Guernica. Wolfram von Richthofen's war diary entry for 26 April 1937 states, "K/88 [the Condor Legion bomber force] was targeted at Guernica in order to halt and disrupt the Red withdrawal which has to pass through here." Under the German concept of tactical bombing, areas that were routes of transportation and troop movement were considered legitimate military targets. The following day, Richthofen wrote in his war diary, "Guernica burning."
The nearest military target of any consequence was a war product factory on Guernica's outskirts, but it went through the attack unscathed. Thus, the attack was widely condemned as a terror bombing.
Guernica's aftermath.
Because a majority of Guernica's men were away, fighting on behalf of the Republicans, at the time of the bombing the town was populated mostly by women and children. These demographics are reflected in "Guernica". As Rudolf Arnheim writes, for Picasso: "The women and children make "Guernica" the image of innocent, defenseless humanity victimized. Also, women and children have often been presented by Picasso as the very perfection of mankind. An assault on women and children is, in Picasso's view, directed at the core of mankind."
"The Times" journalist George Steer, a Basque and Republican sympathizer, propelled this event onto the international scene and brought it to Pablo Picasso's attention. Steer's eyewitness account was published on 28 April in both "The Times" and "The New York Times", and on the 29th it appeared in "L'Humanité", a French Communist daily. Steer wrote:
Picasso lived in Paris during the German occupation during World War II. A German officer allegedly asked him, upon seeing a photo of "Guernica" in Picasso's apartment, "Did you do that?" Picasso responded, "No, you did."
Creation.
"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, and photographer Dora Maar, who had been working with Picasso since mid-1936 photographing his studio and teaching him the technique of cameraless photography 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."
Picasso worked on the painting for 35 days, and finished it on 4 June 1937.
Composition.
The scene occurs within a room where, on the left, a wide-eyed bull stands over a grieving woman holding a dead child in her arms. In the center of the room a horse falls in agony 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 the soldier's left hand contains a stigma, a symbol of martyrdom derived from the stigmata of Christ. A bare light bulb in the shape of an eye blazes over the suffering horse's head.
To the horse's upper right a frightened female figure appears to have floated into the room through a window, and witnesses the scene. She carries a flame-lit lamp, and holds it near the bare bulb. From the right, below the floating figure, an awe-struck woman staggers towards the center, 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. A dove is scribed on the wall behind the bull, part of its body comprising a crack in the wall through which bright light from the outside shines.
On the far right a fourth woman, her arms raised in terror, is entrapped by fire from above and below. Her right hand suggests the shape of an airplane. A dark wall with an open door defines the right side of the room.
Two "hidden" images formed by the horse appear in "Guernica":
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.
According to scholar Beverly Ray, the following list of interpretations reflects the general consensus of historians: "The shape and posture of the bodies express protest"; "Picasso uses black, white, and grey paint to set a somber mood and express pain and chaos"; "flaming buildings and crumbling walls not only express the destruction of Guernica, but reflect the destructive power of civil war"; "the newspaper print used in the painting reflects how Picasso learned of the massacre"; "The light bulb in the painting represents the sun"; and "The broken sword near the bottom of the painting symbolizes the defeat of the people at the hand of their tormentors".
Alejandro Escalona said, "The chaos unfolding seems to happen in closed quarters provoking an intense feeling of oppression. There is no way out of the nightmarish cityscape. The absence of color makes the violent scene developing right before your eyes even more horrifying. The blacks, whites, and grays startle you—especially because you are used to see war images broadcast live and in high-definition right to your living room."
In drawing attention to a number of preliminary studies, the so-called primary project, that show an atelier installation incorporating the central triangular shape which reappears in the final version of "Guernica", Becht-Jördens and Wehmeier interpret the painting as a self-referential composition in the tradition of atelier paintings such as "Las Meninas" by Diego Velázquez. In his "chef d'oeuvre", Picasso seems to be trying to define his role and his power as an artist in the face of political power and violence. But far from being a mere political painting, "Guernica" should be seen as Picasso's comment on what art can actually contribute towards the self-assertion that liberates every human being and protects the individual against overwhelming forces such as political crime, war, and death.
Exhibition.
1937 Paris International Exhibition.
"Guernica" was unveiled and initially exhibited in July 1937 at the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition., where Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia had huge pavilions. The Pavilion, which was financed by the Spanish Republican government at the time of civil war, was built to exhibit the Spanish government's struggle for existence contrary to the Exposition's technology theme. The Pavilion's entrance presented an enormous photographic mural of Republican soldiers accompanied by the slogan:
The display of "Guernica" was accompanied by a poem by Paul Éluard, and the pavilion displayed "The Reaper" by Joan Miró and "Mercury Fountain" by Alexander Calder, both of whom were sympathetic to the Republican cause.
At "Guernica"s Paris Exhibition unveiling it garnered little attention. The public's reaction to the painting was mixed. Max Aub, one of the officials in charge of the Spanish pavilion, was compelled to defend the work against a group of Spanish officials who objected to the mural's modernist style and sought to replace it with a more traditional painting that was also commissioned for the exhibition, "Madrid 1937 (Black Aeroplanes)" by Horacio Ferrer de Morgado. Some Marxist groups criticized Picasso's painting as lacking in political commitment, and faulted it for not offering a vision of a better future. In contrast, Morgado's painting was a great success with Spanish Communists and with the public. The art critic Clement Greenberg was also critical of "Guernica", and in a later essay he termed the painting "jerky" and "too compressed for its size", and compared it unfavorably to the "magnificently lyrical" "The Charnel House" (1944–1948), a later antiwar painting by Picasso.
Among the painting's admirers were art critic Jean Cassou and poet José Bergamín, both of whom praised the painting as quintessentially Spanish. Michel Leiris perceived in "Guernica" a foreshadowing: "On a black and white canvas that depicts ancient tragedy ... Picasso also writes our letter of doom: all that we love is going to be lost..."
European tour.
"Guernica", for which Picasso was paid 200,000 francs for his costs by the Spanish Republican government, was one of the few major paintings that Picasso did not sell directly to his exclusive contracted art dealer and friend, Paul Rosenberg. However, after its exhibition Rosenberg organised a four-man extravaganza Scandinavian tour of 118 works by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, and Henri Laurens. The tour's main attraction was "Guernica".
From January to April 1938 the tour visited Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Göteborg. Starting in late September "Guernica" was exhibited in London's Whitechapel Art Gallery. This stop was organized by Sir Roland Penrose with Labour Party leader Clement Attlee, and the painting arrived in London on 30 September, the same day the Munich Agreement was signed by the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany. It then travelled to Leeds, Liverpool, and, in early 1939, Manchester. There, Manchester Foodship For Spain, a group of artists and activists engaged in sending aid to the people of Spain, exhibited the painting in the HE Nunn & Co Ford automobile showroom for two weeks. "Guernica" then returned briefly to France.
American tour.
After Francisco Franco's victory in Spain, "Guernica" was sent to the United States to raise funds and support for Spanish refugees. The San Francisco Museum of Art (later renamed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) gave the work its first public appearance in the United States from 27 August to 19 September 1939. New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) then mounted an exhibition from 15 November until 7 January 1940, entitled: "Picasso: 40 Years of His Art". The exhibition, which was organized by MoMA's director Alfred H. Barr in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, contained 344 works, including "Guernica" and its studies.
At Picasso's request the safekeeping of "Guernica" was then entrusted to the Museum of Modern Art, and it was his expressed desire that the painting should not be delivered to Spain until liberty and democracy had been established in the country. Between 1939 and 1952, "Guernica" traveled extensively in the United States. Between 1941 and 1942, it was exhibited at Harvard University's Fogg Museum twice.
Between 1953 and 1956 it was shown in Brazil, then at the first Picasso retrospective in Milan, Italy, and then in numerous other major European cities before returning to MoMA for a retrospective celebrating Picasso's 75th birthday. It then went to Chicago and Philadelphia. By this time, concern for the state of the painting resulted in a decision to keep it in one place: a room on MoMA's third floor, where it was accompanied by several of Picasso's preliminary studies and some of Dora Maar's photographs of the work in progress. The studies and photos were often loaned for other exhibitions, but until 1981, "Guernica" itself remained at MoMA.
During the Vietnam War, the room containing the painting became the site of occasional anti-war vigils. These were usually peaceful and uneventful, but on 28 February 1974, Tony Shafrazi—ostensibly protesting Second Lieutenant William Calley's petition for habeas corpus following his indictment and sentencing for the murder of 109 Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre—defaced the painting with red spray paint, painting the words "KILL LIES ALL". The paint was removed with relative ease from the varnished surface.
Establishment in Spain.
As early as 1968, Franco had expressed an interest in having "Guernica" come to Spain. However, Picasso refused to allow this until the Spanish people again enjoyed a republic. He later added other conditions, such as the restoration of "public liberties and democratic institutions". Picasso died in 1973. Franco, ten years Picasso's junior, died two years later, in 1975. After Franco's death, Spain was transformed into a democratic constitutional monarchy, ratified by a new constitution in 1978. However, MoMA was reluctant to give up one of its greatest treasures and argued that a monarchy did not represent the republic that had been stipulated in Picasso's will as a condition for the painting's delivery. Under great pressure from a number of observers, MoMA finally ceded the painting to Spain in 1981. The Spanish historian Javier Tusell was one of the negotiators.
Upon its arrival in Spain in September 1981, it was first displayed behind bomb-and bullet-proof glass screens at the Casón del Buen Retiro in Madrid in time to celebrate the centenary of Picasso's birth, 25 October. The exhibition was visited by almost a million people in the first year. Since that time there has never been any attempted vandalism or other security threat to the painting.
In 1992, the painting was moved from the Museo del Prado to a purpose-built gallery at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, both in Madrid, along with about two dozen preparatory works. This action was controversial in Spain, since Picasso's will stated that the painting should be displayed at the Prado. However, the move was part of a transfer of all of the Prado's collections of art after the early 19th century to other nearby buildings in the city for reasons of space; the Reina Sofía, which houses the capital's national collection of 20th-century art, was the natural place to move it to.
At the Reina Sofía, the painting has roughly the same protection as any other work.
Basque nationalists have advocated that the picture should be brought to the Basque Country, especially after the building of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. Officials at the Reina Sofía claim that the canvas is now thought to be too fragile to move. Even the staff of the Guggenheim do not see a permanent transfer of the painting as possible, although the Basque government continues to support the possibility of a temporary exhibition in Bilbao.
Tapestry at the United Nations.
A full-size tapestry copy of Picasso's "Guernica", by Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach, hung at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City at the entrance to the Security Council room until February, 2021. It is less monochromatic than the original and uses several shades of brown.
The "Guernica" tapestry was first displayed from 1985 to 2009, and returned in 2015. Originally commissioned in 1955 by Nelson Rockefeller, since Picasso refused to sell him the original, the tapestry was placed on loan to the United Nations by the Rockefeller estate in 1985.
On 5 February 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work at the UN, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, UN officials claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Some diplomats, however, in talks with journalists claimed that the Bush administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other US diplomats argued for war on Iraq. In a critique of the covering, columnist Alejandro Escalona hypothesized that "Guernica"s "unappealing ménage of mutilated bodies and distorted faces proved to be too strong for articulating to the world why the US was going to war in Iraq", while referring to the work as "an inconvenient masterpiece."
On 17 March 2009, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Marie Okabe announced that the "Guernica" tapestry had been moved to a gallery in London in advance of extensive renovations at UN Headquarters. The "Guernica" tapestry was the showcase piece for the grand reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery. It was located in the 'Guernica room' which was originally part of the old Whitechapel Library. In 2012 the tapestry was on temporary loan from the Rockefeller family to the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas. It was returned to the UN by March 2015. Nelson A. Rockefeller Jr., the owner of the tapestry, took it back in February 2021, and a replacement is being sought to fill the blank wall in the U.N. building.
Significance and legacy.
During the 1970s, "Guernica" was a symbol for Spaniards of both the end of the Franco regime following Franco's death, and of Basque nationalism. The Basque left has repeatedly used imagery from the picture. An example is the organization Etxerat, which uses a reversed image of the lamp as its symbol. "Guernica" has since become a universal and powerful symbol warning humanity against the suffering and devastation of war. There are no obvious references to the specific attack, making its message universal and timeless.
Art historian and curator W. J. H. B. Sandberg argued in "Daedalus" in 1960 that Picasso pioneered a “new language” combining expressionistic and cubist techniques in "Guernica". Sandberg wrote that "Guernica" conveyed an “expressionistic message” in its focus on the inhumanity of the air raid, while using “the language of cubism.” For Sandberg, the work's defining cubist features included its use of diagonals, which rendered the painting's setting “ambiguous, unreal, inside and outside at the same time.” In 2016, the British art critic Jonathan Jones called the painting a "Cubist apocalypse" and stated that Picasso "was trying to show the truth so viscerally and permanently that it could outstare the daily lies of the age of dictators."
Works inspired by "Guernica" include Goshka Macuga's "The Nature of the Beast" (2009–2010), which used the Whitechapel-hosted United Nations "Guernica" tapestry; "The Keiskamma Guernicas" (2010–2017); and Erica Luckert's theatrical production of "Guernica" (2011–2012). Art and design historian Dr Nicola Ashmore curated an exhibition, "Guernica Remakings", at the University of Brighton galleries from 29 July 2017 to 23 August 2017.