Guernica
The outbreak of the Spanish civil war in July, 1936, signaled the artistic expression of Picasso’s strong personal and emotional involvement in the republican cause. The Spanish government appointed him director of the national collection of art treasures. He was to create a design which would be the centerpiece of the Spanish pavilion at a forthcoming World’s Fair. There was not enough room for an enterprise of this scale in his own studio but there was a large room in an aristocratic old house in the Rue des Grands Augustins, by the river, which would serve his purpose. This was his opportunity to make his own statement on the war which would reach the hearts and minds of thousands or ordinary people.
On April 28, 1937, a squadron of bombers which had been sent to Spain by Hitler in support of General France, set off on a mission to bomb civilian targets. They chose Guernica, a small Basque market town, timing the raid so that the little streets were at their busiest as they arrived. They bombed it for three hours. The town was blotted out, its populations dead or buried in the rubble.
This was the signal Picasso needed. He sent for a canvas,26 feet wide by 11 ½ feet high, and set to work. The feelings he brought to his new picture were those of a deeply committed reporter who saw in the event he was describing a whole universe of human savagery and pain.
There were the principal characters – the horse, the bull, the woman thrusting a light on the scene through an open window. The mural presents a scene of death, violence, brutality, suffering and helplessness without portraying their immediate causes. He chose to paint in black and white which contrasts with the intensity of the scene and invokes the immediacy of a newspaper photograph. By denying color Picasso not only makes his statement starkly clear but even redoubles the impact.
The painting moves from right to left, from the woman falling from a burning house to the bull in the doorway looking over his should for further terrors outside. The center is dominated by a horse, Picasso’s habitual symbol for passive suffering, transfixed and in pain but uttering defiance from his gasping mouth. Strewn about his feet are the butchered remnants of a soldier, unhelmeted to show he is a civilian, a fellow man. A mother with the limp body of a child in her arms throws up her head in a scream of grief. From the ceiling an electric light bulb, disguised as the sun, casts on the scene a mechanical glare.
Except for the animals and fallen soldier, all of the figures in Guernica are female. None of Picasso’s other works conveyed the power and originality of Guernica. And finally, his drawing of a dove, made for a party peace congress, soon became the international symbol of peace.
Christmas