Guernica: Picasso’s Cry Against War
Guernica by Pablo Picasso
Overview
Date: 1937
Style: Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism
School: Spanish
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 3.51m x 7.82m
Location: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Technical Elements
Picasso’s use of monochrome gives the painting a dark and tragic tone. The stark contrast of white, gray, and red emphasizes the figures and amplifies the scene’s emptiness. The absence of color and relief cuts the viewer off from the sensory world, creating a sense of death and despair. The light, defying physics, emanates from the figures themselves, highlighting their pain and suffering. The confined space adds to the feeling of asphyxiation.
Formal Elements
The composition directs the viewer’s gaze to the left, where the figures appear to be fleeing the burning building on the right. Their fragmented bodies and distorted features accentuate the chaotic movement and pathos of the scene. Although the painting evokes classical composition, it subverts traditional forms and colors, creating a sense of death and decay. The figures appear almost arbitrary, yet the work is rigorously designed within the rectangular canvas. The horse, for example, is structured within a triangle, and the figures are grouped within rectangular zones.
Despite the initial impression of chaos, the painting is meticulously organized. Picasso’s use of black, gray, white, pale blue, and ochre creates a stark and austere chromatic range.
Compositional Structure
The composition is structured like a triptych, with the horse and the woman with the lamp in the center, the burning building on the right, and the bull and the woman with the dead child on the left. The light bulb, the eye of the night, presides over the scene, serving as the vertex of the four triangles that make up the composition. The structure is reminiscent of Raphael and Poussin.
A central axis, represented by the white wall, creates symmetry between various elements: the bull and the figure with raised arms, the warrior’s hand and the foot of the dragged woman, the dead child’s head and the small window, and the horse’s legs and the woman’s leg. Two parallel lines further reinforce the left-to-right movement: one connecting the head of the figure with raised arms, the lamp, the horse, the bird, and the bull; the other connecting the foot of the dragged woman and the warrior’s arms.
Rhythm and Movement
The painting’s rhythm creates a crescendo of emotion, from the fallen soldier at the bottom to the wounded horse and crying woman in the middle, culminating in the maximum agitation at the top. This approach is reminiscent of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.
Style and Function
The painting’s style and elements place it within the context of Picasso’s artistic development. Commissioned by the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica served as a powerful denunciation of war’s atrocities. Its presentation in Paris, where Picasso was already a renowned artist, amplified its impact.
Historical Context and Meaning
Inspired by the bombing of Guernica, the painting became a universal symbol of anti-war sentiment. Picasso’s figures—the women and children as victims, the fallen warrior as a personification of dead soldiers, and the woman with the lamp as a symbol of hope—convey the horrors and despair of war. The bull and the horse are open to interpretation, possibly representing death, fascism, or the Spanish people. Ultimately, Guernica expresses the disintegration of the world in the face of war, with contrasting symbols of life, death, despair, and hope.