Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Modern War
First shown at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, Guernica stands today as a universal statement against the horror of modern warfare. The painting was the response of the Spanish-born artist Pablo Picasso to the bombing of Guernica, a small Basque town in northern Spain that was destroyed on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso initially rejected the invitation to represent his native country in the prestigious exhibition. Spain was embroiled in a bloody Civil War. In 1936, Nationalist forces, supported by the military and groups loyal to the Spanish monarchy, rebelled against a new Republican government, which was founded on the democratic and communist principles of Spain's working classes. Nationalist General Francisco Franco, who became Spain's dictator in 1939 until his death in 1975, allied himself with fascist governments in Italy and Germany to take advantage of their powerful industrialized militaries.
Picasso's change of heart reflected the international public outcry that followed the bombing of Guernica. The attack was one of the first demonstrations of a full-scale aerial bombardment. Carried out by the German Luftwaffe's Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria, the three-hour raid left the ancient town in ruins and many children among the civilian dead. Guernica served as a frightening show of Germany's military might and an intentional warning to other nations in the years before World War II.
Picasso's painting, however, includes no obvious references to the Guernica bombing or the Spanish Civil War. The mammoth eleven-foot by twenty-five-foot canvas is a synthesis of modern painting styles. Picasso's compressed pictorial space and fragmented forms are characteristic of Cubism. The heightened emotion and disjointed imagery reflects Surrealism's interest in the workings of the inner mind, imagined through dreams, or in this case, nightmares. The monochromatic color scheme recalls Cubism, but also the black and white newspapers that broadcast the devastating effects of the bombing around the world. Captured clearly in photographs and newsreels, images of the bombing's aftermath altered people's perceptions of modern war, its toll on individuals, and its essential inhumanity.
Virginia B. Spivey, Independent Art Historian
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Virginia B. Spivey. Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Modern War. 2018. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/pablo-picasso-s-guernica-and-modern-war. (Accessed February 1, 2023.)
Virginia B. Spivey, (2018) Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Modern War. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/pablo-picasso-s-guernica-and-modern-war
Virginia B. Spivey. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America <https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/pablo-picasso-s-guernica-and-modern-war>.
A 1937 photograph by David Seymour of Pablo Picasso in front of his painting Guernica.
A sheet of sketches from Picasso's Sueño y mentira de Franco (The Dream and Lie of Franco), 1937.
An excerpt from a catalog for a Surrealist art exhibition in New York, 1942.
A newspaper photograph of destroyed buildings in Guernica after the bombing on April 26, 1937.
A photograph of soldiers from the German Luftwaffe's Condor Legion marching past Adolf Hitler, 1939.
(Warning: graphic material) A propaganda poster including photographs of dead civilians after the bombing of Barcelona on January 30, 1938.
(Warning: graphic material) An excerpt of footage taken during the Spanish Civil War from a US propaganda film, 1942.
A photograph from the Associated Press of Great Britain documenting Spanish war refugees entering France, January 1939.
A Spanish child's drawing of ground soldiers and planes dropping bombs, created between 1936 and 1938.
An excerpt from a US propaganda pamphlet supporting the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, 1936.
An excerpt from a letter written by a Catholic group in the US denouncing the Spanish Republic's anti-religious beliefs, 1937.
A Spanish propaganda poster honoring the Republican Air Force, 1938.
A Republican propaganda poster featuring a mother and child, 1937.
Pablo Picasso's painting The Charnel House, 1944-1945.
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