Picasso’s Guernica: A Deep Dive into the Anti-War Masterpiece
Guernica: A Timeless Condemnation of War’s Brutality
Pablo Picasso, 1937, Oil on Canvas
Theme: Denouncing political conflict. After the events of World War II (the Vietnam War, the return of democracy in Spain, the Korean War, and the Cold War), there was a redistribution of Europe’s geopolitics. This shift gave way to the widespread globalization of information and an approximation among all fields, including an exchange of artistic tastes and ideas. Thus, the 20th century saw the rise of the avant-garde movements. Several trends appeared very quickly, significantly influencing the tastes and interests of galleries and art critics. Artistic values were subjected to marketing.
Style: Cubist and Expressionist Influences
Expressionism reflected, sometimes in a cruel manner, the socio-political atmosphere that heralded the outbreak of World War I and its terrible consequences. African art influenced Expressionism, which used broken lines, curves, and angles, outlining shapes and giving the work an anxious and aggressive character. Guernica contains elements referring to the Expressionist behavior of the characters, as they express their pain and desire to flee.
On the other hand, the work is characterized as Cubist, a style linked to Picasso’s 1907 work, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The main feature is the fragmentation of space and the geometric configuration of figures in related planes. Cubism can be divided into two phases:
- Analytical Phase (1907-1911): Use of warm and cool shades.
- Synthetic Phase (1911-1914): Incorporation of collage, using various everyday materials stuck to the painting.
Detailed Description of Guernica’s Composition
In Guernica, one can barely recognize windows, a roof, a tile floor, and a table. Nine figures appear:
- Center: A woman holding a lamp leans out of a window. Beneath her, a horse is wounded by a spear.
- Left: A mother holds her dead child, and the image of a bull is present.
- Right: A woman with arms raised is engulfed in flames.
Picasso captures the horror and destruction resulting from war. The fragmentation of real space in the figures, the bull’s posture, and the characters’ facial disfigurement create a sense of chaos and the destructiveness of bombs. The limited color palette (white, black, and gray) is influenced by newspaper photographs of the time.
Historical Context and Symbolism
On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the German Condor Legion bombed Guernica, a Basque city populated mainly by women, children, and the elderly. Picasso aimed to reflect the pain felt at that moment: the physical pain of the persecuted, the psychological pain of those who lost loved ones, and the powerlessness and vulnerability of the innocent. He intended his work to be a powerful statement against the harshness and cruelty of war in all its forms.