Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881. He was born into a very creative family, and his father was a well-respected artist, professor and curator at a museum. At an early age, Pablo showed immense signs of talent in art, and as a result, his parents enrolled him in art classes throughout his childhood. As he grew older, he studied art throughout Madrid, sometimes under his father’s instruction. While in his twenties, he moved to Paris and lived with a poet and journalist, Max Jacob. He became immersed in French culture and began painting in a very Parisian style. Later on, Picasso had grown close to a wide variety of visionaries of the time that included many writers and artists. This close-knit group was quite political in nature, which helped to shape Picasso’s view of the world.

Pablo Picasso dubbed himself as a pacifist, and had lived through many wars, including both World Wars and the Spanish Civil War. It was during the latter that had the most impact on him, because it was taking place on the soil of his home country. While he remained quiet in speech about the changing political times throughout the world, he used his art as a way to demonstrate his feelings and stance. From 1936-1939, Spain was under the harsh control of Fascist General Francisco Franco. Prior to this, Spain had finally been under a democracy, but the power of the nationalist army, with the help of other totalitarian countries like Germany and Italy. He elected not to fight in the Spanish army during the war, and was not forced to do so, since he was a French resident at the time. But, he was able to express his point of view through his art, and people took notice.

Created in 1937, Guernica is arguably one of Pablo Picasso’s boldest and most memorable works. He named the painting as such as a type of memorial, because “history’s first aerial bombardment of a civilian population occurred in the small Basque village of Guernica” (Ray 2006). There were a devastating amount of casualties, with the ultimate goal being to force the people of Spain into a state of fear. This fear would lead them to support the fascist regime, and not put up any sort of resistance to their new government. This intimidation tactic obviously infuriated Picasso, and he felt that he needed to bring this situation to the masses through his painting.

Pablo Picasso had initially meant for Guernica to be about a bull fight, but changed the name and altered some of the content to express his sadness in a mural that he was commissioned to do for the World’s Fair of 1937, in order to represent Spain. Creating the work in his own style, Picasso “chooses not to represent the horror of Guernica in realist or romantic terms” (Guernica 1999). He did not want it to be a recreation of the events, but more to show the futility of war and the mess that comes as a result of it. Guernica, like his other works, was painted directly out of the emotion that he was feeling, so he did not feel the need to censor himself in his art.

Picasso chose to paint in black and white, depicting the bleak and dismal nature of a country during wartime. The painting is an immense display of protest, standing at approximately eleven by twenty-three feet. The main theme throughout this painting is death. A human skull is painted as part of the horse’s body, and a dead soldier lies directly under the horse. What is particularly interesting about Guernica is that the images run one into the other. The jumbling was done on purpose, so as not to distinguish one element clearly from the other. Art historians have suggested that the painting “challenges our notions of warfare as heroic and exposes it as a brutal act of self-destruction” (Guernica 1999). Using animals as the ‘main characters’ may also trigger those notions, because this level of barbarism that comes during wartime seems to lack human elements. It is as if there are beasts fighting one another for ultimate supremacy. That is just what was happening during the Spanish Civil War.

Pablo Picasso was a highly influential artist, and though Guernica has been lambasted for being too bold and political, Picasso actually did his best to keep himself out of the political spotlight. He wanted to make a statement through his art, and express the emotions he felt about senseless killings that we are able to view for years to come in the form of a mural and oil on canvas.













References

“Guernica.” (1999). Guernica: testimony of war. Treasures of the World, PBS Online.
Retrieved November 30, 2007 from
http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html.
Ray, B. (2006). Analyzing political art to get at historical fact: Guernica and the Spanish
Civil War. Social Studies, 97(4), 168-171. Retrieved December 1, 2007 from
Academic Search Premier.