Pablo Picasso created the most famous and celebrated painting of the twentieth century as a personal reaction to the horrors and destruction of war. Titled “GUERNICA”, it depicts the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain, by twenty-eight bombers, on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, becoming the first aerially attacked city in history. Picasso painted this massive masterpiece as his way to express to the world the meaningless carnage of wars. It is modern art's most powerful antiwar statement.
The bombing inspired Picasso. Within 15 days of the attack, Pablo Picasso began painting this mural. On completion The Spanish government commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint a large mural for the Spanish display at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris). The Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour brought the Spanish civil war to the world's attention. Guernica epitomizes the tragedies of war and the suffering war inflicts upon individuals. This monumental work has eclipsed the bounds of a single time and place, becoming a perpetual embodiment of peace.
"The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death."
- Pablo Picasso
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment