Güernica

The Guernica paint

It’s a paint made by Pablo Picasso in 1937, during the Spanish civil war, after a German air attack to the Basque city of Guernica, in the north of Spain. It represents the impact that these attack produce to Picasso to this city mainly habited by women, children and old people, because men were at war.

In the Guernica we can find different symbols such as “the strong bull” that represents the Spanish people defending themselves against Franco’s (Spanish president Francisco Franco). We can also find “the horse” at the center of the paint that symbolizes Spanish femininity, and also a dove flying between the bull and the horse, representing the peace and liberty that the Spanish people desire. There are also another faces representing agony, sadness, some faces with an open mouth and exorbitant eyes.
Expressions could be the appropriate word to use for this kind of paintings.

The Guernica is painted in black and white with different tones of grey and blue that we can slightly see. The sizes are big (329 x 776 cm) and the style that Picasso used is called “cubism”, as a representative of the surrealist school, was a figure represents different images.

The paint consisted of 8 figures that suffered different changes while they were painted. At first sight we can think that Picasso painted this canvas in a disordered way, but then we know that first he studied the position and forms of the different components. Before he made his final painting, he made different studies of what could be the Guernica that we actually know.

The canvas is formed by a central pyramid, crowned by a little light bulb, a candle that is hold by a woman that comes out from a window and a head of an agonizing horse. This pyramid surrounds the body of the horse, the semi naked women to the right and the mutilated body of a man to the left. At the sides of the pyramid we see a woman with her raise arms and her head that holds a candle to the right. In the left side we see the bull in an upright and in an unmoved position denoting the Spanish symbol, a woman that holds with her arms the dead body of her son and a bird.

Guernica belongs to the mature era of Picasso and is one of the most important works of all the XX century art. It was painted at the request of the Director General of the arts of Spain, when it was ruled by the Republicans. They asked Picasso to paint this so it will be exposed at the international exposition of 1937 in Paris, in order to bring public attention to the republican cause during the Spanish civil war.

During the forties, Spain was ruled by Dictator General Franco and because of that, the Guernica paint that showed the war effects, could not be exhibit in Spanish territory. It was taken to New York Museum of modern art and stay there until 1981 after General Franco dead.
Here we can see the kind of authoritarianism that ruled Spain during this period.

Actually the Guernica is in Queen Sofia Museum in Madrid were we can see it permanently.

In conclusion, what I see in this paint is the indignation and frustration that the Spanish civil war produced on Picasso’s mind. The colors that he used (white, black and grey), was a way of describing the mood of the Spanish people. These colors represent sadness, agony, hopelessness, etc. I don’t see military weapons, or blood that can remind me the painting of a war, but the figures that appears in the Guernica, is way of describing the symbols that a war leaves.
This is the best representation of the Cubism era.

References:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(cuadro)

http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGLKpyWFyS8

Francesca Montalbetti