Story behind the Art: Guernica

On April 26, 1937, German warplanes started to appear above Guernica, a small Basque village in northern Spain. Each Monday was market epoch in Guernica, and people from the encircling hillsides congregated at the town square. At 4:30 p.m., planes appointed out by Franco’s dictator establishment started dropping bombs over a city with no crucial military value. They intentionally assaulted on a market day, aware that the bombardment would kill most non-combatants, primarily mothers and children, while men were fighting in the war. The bombardment came to be directed at disheartening civilian society and ruining the cradle of the Basque race. 

For more than three hours, twenty-five or more of Germany’s best-equipped bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of extreme-explosive and incendiary bombs on the village, gradually pounding it to remains. Fires raged for three days, ruining 70% of the city. A third of the civilian society, or 1600 families, were harmed or killed. 

The Spanish Civil War started in 1936 when a group of legitimate wing commanders arranged a military coup against the legally chosen Spanish Republic. This had been happening for six months when, amid the war, Picasso was given the commission to form a large portrait for the Spanish republic pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, where Picasso was living. Picasso was famously apolitical, telling Republicans, “I don’t do Politics,” but after months of staring at a blank canvas, he struggled to develop ideas. That’s when history intervened, and on April 27, 1937, news of the horror reached Paris. The world was shocked by this brutal and unjustified attack, and Picasso, who backed his homeland’s Republican government, was devastated by the reports of his demise. The visuals and stories in the newspapers about the defenceless city being invaded struck him exceptionally hard. 

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish artist, carver, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer who lived mainly in France. Picasso’s work is commonly classified into periods. His work in the mid-1920s period was commonly surrealist, and his later work repeatedly included pieces of his former styles. Different artworks and sketches from the years preceding the composition of the Guernica picture tell the expert’s musings on the symbolism bestowed through the guidance of the female body.

How could Picasso reach the most significant number of people while also protesting a war? After a few days of processing his emotions, Picasso frantically began work on new sketches for the commission on May 1, 1937. Picasso’s anti-war rage was articulated in Guernica; his massive mural-sized oil painting was displayed to millions of visitors at the Paris World’s Fair. Guernica is his visual response to the monstrous massacre.

The massive size of the enormous mural is the first thing that strikes you. It is 3.49 meters (11 feet 5 inches) tall and 7.76 meters (25 feet 6 inches) wide, and it is made of one piece of material rather than several canvases sewn together. The art depicts the anguish of people ravaged by violence and disorder. He primed the layers of reflective lead-white, an antiquated paint base by Leonardo da Vinci. Picasso wanted a reflective surface to paint on. The base layer was crucial because it would be incorporated into the composition. He used ordinary household paint with a minimum amount of gloss, so the white parts of the painting are luminous, whereas the blacks are matt black. He painted in oil and monochrome colours of black, grey, and white. The absence of colour is noticed straight away, as people only experienced current events in black and white in 1937. 

From the composition of the painting, we are thrown into apocalyptic action where characters overlap and intersect. Destruction, violent death, and mutilation are everywhere. Picasso trained as a classical artist, and Guernica used classical language. Despite the chaos, there is visual balance by organising the figures into three vertical groupings, while the central figures are stabilised within a large triangle of light. 

Guernica scholar Anthony Blunt divides the characters of the pyramidal composition into two groups.

The first consists of three animals: the bull, the wounded horse, and the winged bird visible in the background on the left. Over the years, various interpretations of the bull and horse have emerged, with some speculating that the bull, which lacks the emotional expression of the other figures, is an emblem of Franco or fascism. The second group consists of humans, including a dead soldier, his disjointed parts are strewn about the floor, representing futility, and several women: the one on the upper right, holding a lamp and leaning through a window; the mother on the left, crying as she has her dead child; the one rushing in from the right; and finally, the one calling to the heavens, arms raised, her bare breasts that once fed her child are exposed and her eyes in the shape of tears, as a house burns down behind her.

Picasso’s Guernica travelled to art institutions in the United States, Brazil, and Western Europe between 1939 and 1952. It stayed in New York just before 1981, when it was returned to Spain, to the Museo Reina Sofia, by Pablo’s wishes, who insisted on the piece not being returned to Spanish soil until Franco was dead. It also made sense for Guernica’s safety, as decades of transport had taken their toll and left the mural in a vulnerable physical form.

Picasso’s painting makes no direct reference to the actual bombardment of Basque territory; instead, it is a figurative painting whose intensity evokes suffering from all wars. Picasso’s Guernica has become a symbol of humanity, a timeless work whose dreadful message is understood by people worldwide, regardless of national, terrestrial, or religious controversies.

References

3. Online sources

Citations for websites: 

1. Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Bombing of Guernica. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica.
2. History Extra. (n.d.). The bombing of Guernica: who was responsible? [online] Available at: https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/guernica-bombing-basque-who-responsible/.
3. ArchDaily. (2022). A Rebellion Against Realism and Art: How Cubism Influenced Modern Architecture. [online] Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/985450/a-rebellion-against-realism-and-art-how-cubism-influenced-modern-architecture.
4. Pablopicasso.org (2009). Guernica by Pablo Picasso. [online] https://www.pablopicasso.org. Available at: https://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp.
5. Widewalls. (2022). Galerie de l’Institut Spotlights Pablo Picasso Sculptures Across Its Two Parisian Spaces | Widewalls. [online] Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/pablo-picasso-galerie-de-linstitut.
6. www.mentalfloss.com. (2015). 15 Fascinating Facts About Picasso’s Guernica. [online] Available at: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63103/15-fascinating-facts-about-picassos-guernica.
7. Welle (www.dw.com), D. (n.d.). Traveling down Picasso’s path to Guernica | DW | 04.04.2017. [online] DW.COM. Available at: https://www.dw.com/en/traveling-down-picassos-path-to-guernica/a-38285984.
8. Vcu.edu. (2019). Available at: http://www.people.vcu.edu/~djbromle/art-symbolism/student-projects-2002/Moosa-Picassos-Guernica.htm.
9. Guernica Remakings. (2015). Picasso’s Guernica. [online] Available at: http://guernicaremakings.com/about/picassos-guernica/.
10. Libguides.com. (2018). LibGuides: Soldier, Writer, Artist, Photographer: Accounts from Europe, 1914-1945 @ Pitt Special Collections: Case IV – The Bombing of Guernica, Spain, 1937. [online] Available at: https://pitt.libguides.com/c.php?g=405564&p=2788792.
11. History TV. (2020). The ramifications of that terrible day reverberated well beyond this small Basque town. [online] Available at: https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-bombing-of-guernica-could-ww2-have-been-stopped-that-day.
12. Images/visual mediums

Citations for YouTube videos: 

1. Great Art Explained (2020). Great Art Explained: Picasso’s Guernica. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJLH7JAsBHA.
2. www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Pablo Picasso – Guernica (1937). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUpcyM-EK7Y&t=6s [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
3. Guernica: What inspired Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece? BBC News. (2017). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_VSixma864.

Citations for images/photographs – Print or Online:

1. AK Rockefeller (2012). Guernica Bombing Map. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/akrockefeller/7424795528/in/photostream/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
2. History Extra. (n.d.). The bombing of Guernica: who was responsible? [online] Available at: https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/guernica-bombing-basque-who-responsible/.
3. Getty images (2018). Pablo Ruiz Picasso in his Paris studio. Available at: https://www.vogue.fr/fashion-culture/fashion-exhibitions/story/why-pablo-picasso-remains-popular/2995 [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
4. Andrey V. (2018). Photo of Pablo Picasso Working on Guernica. Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/pablo-picasso-galerie-de-linstitut [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
5. Andrey V. (2018). Pablo Picasso Guernica. Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/pablo-picasso-galerie-de-linstitut [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
6. Great Art Explained (2020). The Composition. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJLH7JAsBHA [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
7. Sunil, A. (2020). The women characters in Guernica. Available at: artisera.com/blogs/expressions/10-facts-about-Picasso’s-famous-painting-Guernica-that-you-need-to-know [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
8.  Sunil, A. (2020). The bull and the horse depicted in Guernica. Available at: artisera.com/blogs/expressions/10-facts-aPicassosassos-famous-painGuernicarnica-that-you-need-to-know [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
9. Cortés, J. and Lores, R. (2018). Picasso’s Guernica. Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/pablo-picasso-guernica [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].
10.  C. Elle (2018). People Protesting Using Guernica details. Available at: https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/pablo-picasso-guernica [Accessed 20 Nov. 2022].