There is great artist and there is great art. Then, there is Pablo Picasso, and there is his Guernica (pronounced Gernika). Picasso, the most well-known, inventive and influential artist of the modern 20th century era; and Guernica widely regarded as the most moving and emphatic anti-war painting in history.
Guernica was not intended to happen, but seemed destined for creation!
Picasso had never been overtly political in his life and art till then, but in 1936, while living in Paris, he was quite perturbed by the Spanish Civil War resulting from the military conflict between the newly elected left-leaning Republican government and the opposition Nationalist party, led by Francisco Franco of the military junta.
Even in January 1937, when Spain’s Republican government commissioned Picasso to develop a mural for the “International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life” to be held later that year in Paris and he started to work on some initial sketches, he wasn’t sure of his painting’s theme.
Then, on April 26, 1937, Guernica happened!
A tragedy that shook Picasso
Guernica was a small town in the Basque Country, on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, bordering France. All too suddenly, that morning and in support of the Nationalists, German warplanes invaded the Guernica sky and in a macabre display for over three hours, bombed Guernica to devastation, killing over 200 civilians.
Deeply shaken and urged by his friends, Picasso dropped his earlier sketches and decided to make Guernica’s bombing, the subject of his commissioned painting.
He was to say, “In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica….. I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.” Dora Maar, a surrealist artist and photographer and an anti-fascist activist who was Picasso’s lover and partner at the time, closely documented Picasso’s work in progress.
Guernica was completed in 35 days, a truly remarkable achievement, considering the painting’s massive spread across a canvas 3.49 mts by 7.76 mts. In keeping with the sombre theme of the painting, Picasso eschewed colour to make Guernica in black, white and grey, giving it minimum gloss by using specially formulated house-paint!
But Guernica, with its utter lack of physical battle depiction, is not strictly as considered, a war painting. Its disjointed figures in a disjointed composition – a grieving woman holding a dead child in her arms; a fallen horse in agony with a gaping hole in its side and a light bulb over its head; a woman blankly staring into the blazing light bulb; a dismembered soldier under the horse, his severed arm grasping a broken sword from which a flower is growing, et.al. – are in fact depiction of the aftermath of war!
Art critics have termed it a symphony of chaos, destruction and suffering, yet also upholding a sense of human resilience in the face of death and adversity.
After its display at the Paris International Exposition, Guernica travelled to other countries, which is when it started drawing the world’s attention to Spain. In 1939, it travelled to the USA to raise funds and support for Spanish refugees.
In March 1939, the fall of Madrid spelled the end of the Spanish Civil War – in which over 500,000 people had died – and saw the establishment of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship which lasted until his death in 1975.
The safekeeping of Guernica’s future
In 1939, by the time Guernica came to the New York Museum of Modern Art, Picasso had already laid the condition – and even drawn a legal document to that effect – that the painting must not enter Spain as long as Franco ruled and until the country returned to democracy with restoration of “public liberties and democratic institutions.”
Also, fearing Nazi occupation of France, he entrusted the New York Museum of Modern Art with Guernica’s future safekeeping. It was from there, over the next 15-20 years, the painting was exhibited across the world. Its extensive globe-trotting, however, left it in a very fragile physical state, which became a matter of serious concern.
So back in New York, in 1956, at the celebration of Picasso’s 75th birthday with a retrospective, it was decided that Guernica would not move anymore from the Museum’s premises. There it found a permanent room and alongside were displayed some of his preliminary studies of the painting and Dora Maar’s photographs of the Guernica’s work in progress.
In 1968, Franco wanted Guernica to come to Spain, but Picasso remained vehement in his refusal.
When Guernica finally came to Spain
After Picasso’s death in 1973, followed by Franco’s in 1975, Spain transformed to a democratic monarchy with a new ratified Constitution. However, it took considerable pressure and extensive negotiations before the New York Museum of Modern Art let go its most treasured painting, and Guernica returned to Spain in time for Picasso’s birth centenary in October 1981.
It was placed in Museo del Prado (Prado Museum, Madrid) and in 1992, finally shifted to Reina Sofia Museum (Madrid), where it remains to this day.
Guernica was born in reaction to the bombing of a small town during the Spanish Civil War but by not making any obvious reference to the specific attack, Picasso created a universal, timeless theme of suffering and grief wrought by war yet underlined by empathy and human resilience.
All this in a single work of art, make Guernica a testament to Picasso’s genius as an artist and his commitment to peace and humanity. Today, as an indelible statement on violence and conflict, it continues to challenge viewers to confront uncomfortable truths and questions.
Through its powerful visual imagery and Picasso’s own uncompromising, unflagging moral stance on it, Guernica has become a talisman for anti-war stand, peace and human rights activism and protests the world over.
An anecdote, sums it up – a German officer is believed to have visited Picasso (possibly as part of surveillance) at his Paris studio and upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment, allegedly asked, “Did you do that?”
Picasso is said to have responded, “No, you did!”
Today, over 87 years later, who remembers Francisco Franco?
