Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain, by twenty-eight bombers, on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The attack killed between 250 and 1,600 people, and many more were injured.
A huge mural had already been commissioned from Picasso by the Spanish Republican government to decorate the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris). The bombing of Guernica provided Picasso with the inspiration for the mural which he had previously lacked. The striking black and white photographs that appeared in newspapers within days after the bombing made such a lasting impact that, within fifteen days, Picasso began work on the final canvas for the mural. "Guernica" became an iconic work after touring overseas while raising awareness about the civil war in Picasso's homeland, Spain. It also foreshadowed the horrors that would occur only a few years later in World War II. The work has come to represent the suffering of war victims and acts as a reminder of the horrors they have survived. It has surpassed the limits of the event which inspired it, becoming a timeless icon for all generations to ponder.
Picasso said as he worked on the mural:
| “ | 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.[1] |
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