Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso
Probably Picasso's most famous work, Guernica is certainly the his most powerful
political statement, painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating
casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil
War.
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the
suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This
work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the
tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion
Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and
widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world's
attention.
This work is seen as an amalgmation of pastoral
and epic styles. The discarding of color intensifis the drama, producing a
reportage quality as in a photographic record. Guernica is blue, black and
white, 3.5 metre (11 ft) tall and 7.8 metre (25.6 ft) wide, a mural-size canvas
painted in oil. This painting can be seen in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and
contradict one another. This extends, for example, to the mural's two dominant
elements: the bull and the horse. Art historian Patricia Failing said,
"The bull and the horse are important characters in Spanish culture.
Picasso himself certainly used these characters to play many different roles
over time. This has made the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the
bull and the horse very tough. Their relationship is a kind of ballet that was
conceived in a variety of ways throughout Picasso's career."
Some critics warn against trusting the
polital message in Guernica. For instance the rampaging bull, a major motif of
destruction here, has previouse figured, whether as a bull or Minotaur, as
Picasso' ego. However, in this instance the bull probably represents the
onslaught of Fascism. Picasso said it meant brutality and darkness, presumably
reminiscent of his prophetic. He also stated that the horse represented the
people of Guernica.
Historical
context
Guernica
is a town in the province of Biscay in Basque Country. During the Spanish Civil
War, it was regarded as the northern bastion of the Republican resistance
movement and the epicenter of Basque culture, adding to its significance as a
target.
The Republican forces were made up of
assorted factions (Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, to name a few) with
wildly differing approaches to government and eventual aims, but a common
opposition to the Nationalists. The Nationalists, led by General Francisco
Franco, were also factionalized but to a lesser extent. They sought a return to
the golden days of Spain, based on law, order, and traditional Catholic family
values.
At about 16:30 on Monday, 26 April 1937,
warplanes of the German Condor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von
Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours. Germany, at this time led by
Hitler, had lent material support to the Nationalists and were using the war as
an opportunity to test out new weapons and tactics. Later, intense aerial
bombardment became a crucial preliminary step in the Blitzkrieg tactic.
After the bombing, Picasso was made aware of
what had gone on in his country of origin. At the time, he was working on a
mural for the Paris Exhibition to be held in the summer of 1937, commissioned
by the Spanish Republican government. He deserted his original idea and on 1
May 1937, began on Guernica. This captivated his imagination unlike his
previous idea, on which he had been working somewhat dispassionately, for a
couple of months. It is interesting to note, however, that at its unveiling at
the Paris Exhibition that summer, it garnered little attention. It would later
attain its power as such a potent symbol of the destruction of war on innocent
lives.
Comparisons
The
themes of death, the bullfight and the crucifixion are common to both pictures.
The
Guernica bull is very like the bull in the drawing, both are huge, in profile
and stand motionless observing the scene before them.
There
is a strong similarity in the dramatic clashing of light and dark tones and the
overhead light sources in both pictures.
In
both Guernica and the 1934 drawing there is a second bull's head concealed
below the horse.
The
head of the woman with the lamp in Guernica swoops downwards from the upper
right corner in exactly the same way as does the head of the hidden Lucifer in
the drawing. Lucifer means 'the light bringer' and is related symbolically to
Venus, the Morning Star. She represents the evil of the physical world.
The
fallen warrior in Guernica is very similar to the central figure in the 1934
drawing, both are in the crucifixion pose and both have severed arms,
identifying them symbolically with Picasso. The fallen warrior, like the
central figure in the drawing, is also relatable to Parsifal, because of the
broken sword in his hand. Parsival was given a magnificent sword which breaks
in two at a crucial moment in battle.
In
the centre of Guernica there is a human skull concealed within the body and
legs of the wounded horse.
Both
pictures contain the same overlaying of horse and skull in the centre.
In
Guernica the horse has been stabbed by a spear, a symbol representing
Picasso-the first four letters of his name mean spear in Spanish. The diamond
tip of the spear represents harlequin, who like Christ has a mystical power
over death.
The
Guernica spear also has a relationship to the broad paintbrush in the 1934
drawing. This has been overlaid on to the skull within the area of the
concealed horse. In Guernica we find the skull penetrated by a spear within the
horse. Picasso would have certainly made the association between a wet
paintbrush and a spear in his childhood. Therefore it seems plausible from the
placing of the paintbrush in the 1934 drawing, that the Guernica spear, is also
a cryptic representation of Picasso's paintbrush, partly because of its similar
appearance and partly because of its connection to Picasso's remarks about
painting being a weapon,
'No, painting is not
made to decorate apartments. its an offensive and defensive weapon against the
enemy.'
The
Guernica spear penetrates a cryptic representation of Hitler in the centre of
the composition. In the centre of the 1934 drawing there is also a concealed
portrait of Hitler.
In
the 1934 drawing, Picasso takes possession of the spear from Klingsor, who is
strongly associated with Hitler. In Guernica, the artist continues this
Wagnerian narrative by stabbing Hitler with the spear, which has now been
transformed into a talisman of Picasso's personal mystical symbols.
Picasso was very secretive about the meanings of Guernica and
would only talk about it in a guarded and superficial way, yet the mysteries of
its imagery have given rise to more art historical interpretations than any
other picture in history. Surprisingly, nearly all of these scholarly
interpretations are oblivious to Guernica's concealed imagery.
"I have never considered
painting as a pleasure-giving art, a distraction; I have wanted, by drawing and
painting, "...since those were my weapons, to advance even further in the
knowledge of the world and of man." I have always believed, and still do
believe that artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot...
"...and should not remain indifferent in the face of a conflict where the
highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake."
For Pablo Picasso, as for
many others, that conflict was precipitated on April 26, 1937. On that day, the
citizens of Guernica in Spain, listened nervously to the ominous drone of
approaching aircraft. With apprehension and fear, they watched a fleet of heavy
German bombers and fighter planes approach their peaceful town.
The sky grew dark with
planes. And then, unexpectedly and relentlessly, the German planes, flying
under the orders of General Franco, loosed their cargo of death on the city.
The assault lasted three and a half hours and completely destroyed Guernica.
The citizens who tried to flee from the city were machine-gunned by the fighter
planes. An innocent human community was the target for the first experiment in
saturation bombing in military history.
As a Spaniard and a humanist,
Picasso was deeply affected by the events of the Spanish civil war. A few
months earlier, he had published a searing indictment of the fascist forces in
Spain in a pamphlet entitled 'The Dream and Lie of Franco'. With the news of
the Guernica catastrophe, Picasso found the theme and title for his great
mural, which would express, through the weapon of art, his passionate
condemnation of war and brutality.
On May 1, he made the first
sketch for the mural. By the tenth of May, he had already begun work on the
canvas. And in early June, the mural was completed. There are about 100
recorded sketches relating to the mural: some made before Picasso started
working on the canvas, and others done simultaneously with the painting.
Comparing the sketches with the finished work, we can trace the process of
invention, rejection, and choice, which is at the core of artistic creation.
In some of the preliminary
sketches, Picasso experimented with colour. Even when the mural was almost
completed, the artist stuck pieces of patterned wallpaper onto the canvas to
determine the effect of colour on the composition. In the end, it is the very
absence of colour which adds to the strength of the painting. The poet Michel
Leiris wrote of it, "In a black and white rectangle, such as that in which
ancient Greek tragedy appeared,... " Picasso sends us the announcement of
our mourning." On another level, the absence of colour gives the work the
immediacy of newsprint, the means by which we receive announcements of modern
catastrophes. The stippled body of the horse has the appearance of a printed
newspaper page.
The mural is constructed on
the scheme of a medieval altarpiece, a large central panel framed by two
smaller side panels. Within this framework, a large triangle dominates the
composition. It is a carefully balanced design. The apex of the triangle is at
a point just above the small lamp. The right side cuts down in a sharp line,
carries the thrust through the figure of the running woman, and has its base in
the large mass of her left foot. The left side of the triangle follows the line
of the table down to the open hand of the broken statue. The balance achieved
by the hand and foot at either end of the triangle is emphasized by the mass of
the statue's head, and the large form of the running woman's knee.
The order of such a careful
design is contrasted with the chaos and panic introduced by the angular
distortions of forms and the violent contrasts of light, shade, and texture.
All of the figures in the composition, except for the falling woman in the
right panel, are strongly directed toward the bull. The intensity of this
movement is checked by the physiological fact that a viewer's eye naturally
moves from left to right.
If we reverse the picture and
the direction of the movement corresponds with the way the eye tends to scan a
painting, we feel that the figures are rushing uncontrollably toward the bull,
and the balance of tension is lost. Although the basic elements of the mural
appear in the first sketch - the bull, the stricken horse, and the woman with
the lamp - they underwent many changes before reaching their final form.
In the first sketch, the
horse lies on his back, apparently dead. In the second sketch, although he has
collapsed, he stretches his neck upward. Picasso experimented with the horse in
various stages of collapse. Some of these drawings are abstract and others are
careful anatomical studies. Both techniques appear in this drawing. The horse's
head evolves through a number of sketches, in pencil and in oil, changing even
on the canvas, from an upside-down position to one beginning to rise to its
final, powerful position, in which it seems to echo the doomed but defiant cries
of the Spanish republicans. The paint dripping from the horse's teeth conveys
the impatient fury with which the artist worked, and also gives the illusion of
saliva running from the horse's gaping jaw.
The mother holding her dead
child first enters the composition at the right. The group does not yet work
meaningfully into the scene; the mother's cry is lost in empty space. Yet in
her pose and placement, she suggests the role that will later be taken by the
running woman.
The mother-child group is
later tried in a more vertical setting. The heavy mass of her lower limbs gives
a falling feeling to the group. The need for a downward thrust in the
composition is later shifted to the falling woman in the right panel. Two more
variations of the mother-child group investigate the seemingly inexhaustible
possibilities offered by this group, independent of their final use in the
mural.
Another later sketch, not
related to the earlier ones or to the final one on the canvas, is more Cubist
in design and seems to have been conceived as a totally different alternative.
In their final position on the mural, the mother and child are framed by the
protective body of the bull, and it is to his monumental image that the
mother's cry is directed.
Picasso chose to use women as
the actors in this tragedy, to represent innocent humanity victimised by the
horrors of war. In the anatomy of their grief, he saw how pain and agony
distorts the human face. There is nothing pretty or ennobling in the face of a
mother whose child has been killed.
The artist investigates the
grief-stricken face of the mother in a series of sketches. The grotesque chaos
of her emotions is expressed as an explosion of order and shape. The romantic
concept of the eyes as the windows of the soul has been shattered. These
flaming pinwheels have looked upon an indescribable horror, and can never be
the same again. The wildly streaming tears, like scars cut into the face, add
the horror of physical pain to the mother's emotional agony.
In the final composition, the
forms have been reduced to universal symbols. The contorted frenzy of the
tear-streaked eyes is replaced by eyes that are large teardrops themselves. The
tear-shaped eyes of the mother are repeated on the falling figure and are also
echoed in the shape of the head of the lamp bearer. The dead child's face is
drawn simply, reflecting neither pain nor fear. His gentle face is a poignant
reminder that the bombing of Guernica was a latter-day massacre of the
innocents.
The bull, a major element of
the composition from the beginning, undergoes a series of transformations not
only of character, but of placement. As a dominant symbol, it first occupied a
fairly central position. While other elements of the composition shifted, the
bull for a while remained centrally placed. By the first stage of the mural, he
has been moved to the left, but his body still reaches into the central area.
At this point, the bull's
back, insignificant as a central focus, is broken up with abstract dark
shadows, while the empty space in the upper left corner is rather arbitrarily
filled with a crescent moon. The position of the bull is solved in the fourth
stage of the mural by turning his body to the left, but still having it face
the scene of the action. The crescent shape which first filled the empty left
corner is now effectively replaced by the flame-like tail of the bull. The
shifting of the bull's body away from the centre also served to open the space
necessary for the horse to raise his head. The character of the bull's head evolved
from docile to confused, to humanistic, to monumentally powerful, to this
final, enigmatic countenance.
We have already observed that
the bull is the focus toward which most of the figures turn. What is its
meaning? Since prehistoric times, the peoples of the Mediterranean have had a
strong mythological association with the bull. This has persisted from the cave
paintings of early man to the bull worship of ancient Crete, and its legends of
the Minotaur bull-man, to the continuing mystique of the Spanish bullfight.
Picasso has repeatedly used the symbol of the bull and the Minotaur in his art.
The artist has refused to
give a verbal explanation of the bull in Guernica, insisting that pictures
continue to change after their completion according to the state of mind of
whoever is looking at them. There have consequently been many interpretations
of the mural and its symbols. Here we will offer one possible explanation of
the bull's meaning.
The strong, angular lines of
the painting create feelings of conflict and anxiety. The contorted, anguished
figures, reflecting chaos and bewilderment, turn toward the bull. The
rectangular mass of his body, solidly planted on four feet which rest firmly on
the ground, expresses the only element of structural stability in the painting.
He alone has not been devastated by the catastrophe. He is isolated from the
rest of the participants in the tragedy by his stability, and yet, he is
connected to them in at least two ways. His body forms a protective arch for
the mother and child, and he shares the piercing scream of the horse and
mother, vividly expressed in their sharp, spear-like tongues. But his agony is
not physical; his cry seems to be one of spiritual or psychological pain.
The bull, then as the only
stable and unmutilated figure in the composition, the one to whom the other
stricken characters turn for help or hope, may be interpreted as the
indestructible spirit of Spain, aware of the horrors suffered by her people,
but capable of enduring and overcoming them.
In the pamphlet Dream and Lie
of Franco, Picasso portrayed Franco as a loathsome organism whose murderous
evil is destroyed by the innocent strength of the bull. The falling figure in
the right-hand panel provides a dynamic contrast with the bull. Her crashing fall
is the counterpart of the powerful stability of the bull.
The disembodied woman looking
in from a window holds a small lamp, which illuminates the scene. Her classic
profile relates her to the ancient Greek chorus, which narrated the action of
tragedy without being a part of it. Perhaps she represents the conscience of
the outside world, horrified by the news of Guernica.
The larger light above her
lamp does not cast any light on the scene. Can this eye-shaped light, with an
electric bulb for a pupil, casting short, ineffectual rays, symbolize the
larger, unconcerned world?
The broken statue of a
warrior at the base of the mural emphasizes the total devastation of fascism,
which mutilates not only bodies, but ideas and art as well. The faint shadow of
a flower, rising from the statue's broken sword, can be seen as a hope of
resurrection, a hope for the rebirth of humanism through the weapons of art.
Picasso consciously thought
of his art, and this painting in particular, as a weapon by which he could oppose
the evils of war and fascism. "Painting," he has said, "is not
intended for interior decoration, it is an instrument of offensive and
defensive war against the enemy."
In the
mural Guernica, Picasso was motivated by intense, personal feelings, and he used
his artistic genius to give universal expression to his sentiments. He has
created a monument of twentieth century art, which in its powerful joining of
form and content, ensures it a place among the great masterpieces of world art.
Guernica
Guernica is a painting by famous Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It was
painted as a reaction to the aerial bombing of Guernica, Spain by German and
Italian forces during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The Spanish Republic,
government of Spain, appointed Picasso to paint a large mural about the bombing
to display at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.
Guernica shows the cataclysms of war as well as the anguish and destruction
it inflicts upon people, especially innocent civilians. This painting has
attained an enormous reputation over the years, and has become an everlasting
reminder of the devastation of war, in addition to becoming an anti-war icon.
After it was completed, Guernica was exhibited worldwide during a
limited tour, receiving wide acclaim and becoming quite famous. The exposure
assisted in bringing the Spanish Civil War to the world’s awareness.
The Painting –
Summary Of Individual Components
The colors of Guernica are black, white, and grey. It is an
oil painting on canvas, measuring 11 feet tall by 25.6 feet wide, and is on
display at the Museo Reina Sofía (Spain’s national museum) in Madrid. The work
of art was completed by Picasso in June, 1937 and depicts turmoil, people and
animals suffering, with buildings in disarray – torn apart by violence and mayhem. Guernica can be summarized by its individual
components as follows:
The encompassing scenario is
set within a room where, in an empty part on the left, a wide-eyed bull looms
above a woman grieving for a dead child she is holding.
The middle of the painting
shows a horse falling over in pain, having been pierced by a spear or lance. It
is essential to bear in mind that the gaping wound in the side of the horse is
the primary focus of the artwork.
Two obscured visuals formed
by the horse can be found in Guernica: first is human
skull is superimposed on the body of the horse. Secondly, it appears that a
bull is goring the horse from below. The head of the bull is formed largely by
the front leg of the horse, which has its knee on the ground. The knee cap of
the horse makes up the bull’s nose, and the bull’s horn jabs at the horse’s
breast.
The tail of the bull is
formed in the shape of flame and smoke appearing in the window at far left,
produced by a lighter shade of grey bordering it.
Underneath the horse lies a
dead mutilated soldier, the hand of his severed arm still grasping a broken
sword, from which a flower springs up.
In the open palm of the dead
soldier is a stigmata, symbolic of the sacrifices of Jesus Christ.
Above the head of the impaled
horse is a light bulb which glares outward like an evil eye, it can also be
likened to the single bulb hanging in a prison cell. Picasso may have also
intended the symbolism of the bulb to be associated with the Spanish word for
light bulb which is “bombilla”. This brings to mind the word “bomb”, which
could symbolize the detrimental impact which technology can have on humanity.
Towards the upper right of
the horse is a fearful female figure that appears to be watching the actions in
front of her. She seems to have floated through a window into the room. Her
floating arm is holding a flaming lamp and the lamp is very close to the bulb,
symbolizing hope – and is in opposition to the light bulb.
Staggering in from the right,
below the floating female figure, is a horror-struck woman who looks up
vacantly into the glaring light bulb.
The tongues of the grieving
woman, the bull, and the horse are shaped like daggers, which suggest
screaming.
A bird, probably a dove, is
perched on a shelf behind the bull and seems to be in panic.
On the far right of the
painting, a person with arms extended in sheer terror is trapped by fire from
below and above.
A shadowy wall that has an
open door becomes the right end of the painting.
Interpretations
Interpretations of the
symbolism of Guernica fluctuate extensively and contradict
each other depending on the viewer. The list below echoes the most common
interpretations and opinions of historians:
·
The form and bearing of the figures in Guernica convey protest.
·
The artist utilizes white, black, and grey paint to create a
sorrowful atmosphere and convey suffering and disorder.
·
The flaming structures and crumbling walls do not merely
communicate the devastation of Guernica, but reveal the harmful
force of war.
·
The newspaper print used in the backdrop of the painting portrays
how Picasso found out about the bombing.
·
The light bulb in the artwork symbolizes the sun.
·
The broken sword close to the base of the painting signifies the
defeat of the people by their conquerors.
With Guernica,
Picasso wanted to establish his identity and his strength as an artist when
confronted with political authority and intolerable violence. But instead of
being simply a political piece of art,Guernica ought to be viewed as Picasso’s
statement on what art can in fact donate to the self-assertion that emancipates
all humanity, and shields every person from overpowering forces like political
crime, war, and death.
