Pablo Picasso's Guernica.
On July 12 1937 Pablo Picasso presents his famous painting Guernica for the very first time at the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica a Basque Country village in northern Spain by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces on 26 April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War Guernica has become one of today's most famous pieces of art. I'm sure you have already some reproduction of Picasso's Guernica somewhere. I remember there was a picture of it also in one of the textbooks we used for German classes back in school. Of course it is an impressive piece of modern art but what makes it so special is of course the history that is connected with it. We already had an article about Pablo Picasso one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. BTW, we also had to remove a Picasso video from our yovisto archive because of copyright reasons. Let's keep fingers crossed that we don't do any wrong with our Guernica post... The little town of Guernica which is the name giver for the picture, is a Basque Country village in northern Spain It was in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil war when on April 26, 1937 an aerial attack was carried out by planes of the German Luftwaffe "and the Italian Fascist supporting the Nationalist forces of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing caused widespread destruction and numerous civilian deaths. It is considered one of the first raids in the history of modern military aviation on a defenseless civilian population. The bombing shocked and inspired many artists, among them the most famous Pablo Picasso. By the time, Picasso was living in Paris. He had last visited his home country Spain in 1934 and would never return. In January 1937 Picasso was originally commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris However, it was only on May 1, having read an eyewitness account by Times journalist George Steer that he abandoned his initial project and started sketching a series of preliminary drawings for the mural-size painting, which he would finish in early June 1937 Guernica is completely colored in grey black and white and it is a huge painting 3.5 meters high and 7.8 meters wide painted in oil. The painting shows suffering people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence and chaos. But as a rule, a picture tells more than a thousand words. You should simply click on the image above and have a look for yourself. There is this interesting story, that while living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II one German officer allegedly asked Picasso upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment, "Did you do that?" Picasso responded, "No, you did." Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another. Therefore, I will spare you a debate about art criticism. When pressed to explain his thoughts and intentions expressed in Guernica Picasso said: "...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.". After the exhibition at the 1937 World's Fair the San Francisco Museum of Art gave the work its first public, free appearance in the United States in 1939 then it moved to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The painting traveled extensively in the United States between 1953 and 1956 it was shown in Brazil at the first-ever Picasso retrospective in Milan, Italy and then in numerous other major European cities, before returning to MoMA for a retrospective celebrating Picasso's seventy-fifth birthday. Under great pressure from a number of observers, MoMA finally ceded the painting to Spain in 1981. Guernica has become a cultural icon that speaks to mankind not only against war but also of hope and peace. At yovisto, you can learn more about Picasso's artwork in Francoise Gilot's talk 'An Encounter with Picasso' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.