Guernica

Abstract

One of the most significant paintings in the history of the twentieth century, Picasso’s Guernica is also the most important of the artist’s works because it immediately transcended the art world to become a world symbol of humanity’s abhorrence of warfare and terrorism. Guernica was painted with two purposes. First, it was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government officials to serve as the centerpiece of the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. Second, to memorialize the tragedy of the bombardment of the Basque town of Guernica, perpetrated by the German Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion. Picasso’s tour de force continues to be a representation of the world’s indictment of crimes of war against the innocent.

Picasso’s Guernica

Early in 1937, Max Aub, cultural delegate of the Spanish Embassy and Josep Lluis Sert, a Catalan architect visited Pablo Picasso in the hopes that he would accept the commission of painting something bold and arresting, specifically for the Spanish pavilion. The pavilion designed by Sert was to represent Spain in the 1937 Paris International Exposition (Martin, 2002). In sketches discovered in 1985 by researchers in the Musée Picasso, dated April 1937, Picasso seemed to have been considering not a propaganda statement as the subject for the painting, but a surrealist depiction of an artist’s studio with symbolism that had meaning only for him (Martin, 2002). These drawings do indicate that the artist was already planning a huge canvas with a central compositional triangle and a light source at the peak (Martin, 2002).

On April 27, 1937, Guernica, the town of the Basques was completely destroyed in the afternoon. A fleet of aeroplanes consisting of the German types, Junkers and Heinkel fighters and bombers did not cease unloading their bombs on the town and neighborhood villages. The fighters plunged low from above to machine-gun those of the population who had taken refuge on the fields...