Pablo Picasso's Guernica

"It is modern art's most powerful antiwar statement..."



On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded.

I'll post some links for Guernica to help you with your first two writing assignments of the semester.




Here is a site that has many details and early drawings used to plan for the final work.


"Describe to me what you see." This was the first writing assignment I gave you on the first day of class. I projected the image of Guernica on the screen and asked you to tell me what you saw. That's it. Simple. Don't tell me if you like it or not. Don't tell me if it is any good. I just want a pure description of the image. Find some help with describing art works here and here.




"What does the image of the flower symbolize in the painting?"


The trick to this one is that you will have to expalin the other symbols in the painting. The flower has meaning in a greater matrix of symbols and meanings that the artist is presenting in the image. The flower has meaning in relationship with the other symbols. How is the flower different than the other figures and things in the painting? This assignment is not just describing the painting but to figure out the meaning. What is the artist saying? What is the artist communicating? What is this painting about? What does the artist think about what happened on the day of the bombing?





UN conceals Picasso’s “Guernica” for Powell’s presentation.


In an act with extraordinary historical resonance, United Nations officials covered up a tapestry reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s anti-war mural “Guernica” during US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5 presentation of the American case for war against Iraq.

Picasso’s painting commemorates a small Basque village bombed by German forces in April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The painter, in desolate black, white and grey, depicts a nightmarish scene of men, women, children and animals under bombardment. The twisted, writhing forms include images of a screaming mother holding a dead child, a corpse with wide-open eyes and a gored horse. Art historian Herbert Read described the work as “a cry of outrage and horror amplified by a great genius.”

The reproduction has hung outside the Security Council chamber at UN headquarters in New York since its donation by the estate of Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1985. As the council gathered to hear Powell on Wednesday, workers placed a blue curtain and flags of the councilÂ’s member countries in front of the tapestry.


Extra Credit: Why do you think they would cover up the reproduction of Guernica when Colin Powell was trying to convince the American people that we should go to war in Iraq?