GUERNICA BY PICASSO
Historical Context
Several of Picasso’s friends were experiencing very unhappy family situations. In addition, his
homeland, Spain, was suffering in a brutal civil war, and one of the most inhuman acts had
recently occurred. In support of the fascist side, 100 bombers from Nazi Germany bombed the
historic town of Guernica in northern Spain. The bombing happened on market day when
there were crowds of people there.
This was the first time a city had ever been destroyed with bombs, although it happened
many times during World War II, which followed soon afterward.
The events of 1937 led to Picasso being surrounded with great bitterness. Several of his friends
were experiencing great unhappiness, while the bombing of the small town of Guernica in his
Spanish homeland shocked him. Critics have likened his need to express himself about these
things to Francisco de Goya's prints showing brutality during the time of Napoleon's conquest
of Spain, and scenes from the slaughter of innocent people in Odessa, Russia, in the famous
motion picture by Sergei Eisenstein, "The Battleship Potemkin."
The huge mural was produced in less than two months, under a commission by the Spanish
Republican government to decorate the Spanish Pavillion at the Paris International Exposition .
The painting does not portray the event; rather, Picasso expressed his outrage by employing
such imagery as the bull, the dying horse, a fallen warrior, a mother and dead child, a woman
trapped in a burning building, another rushing into the scene, and a figure leaning from a
window and holding out a lamp. Despite the complexity of its symbolism, and the impossibility
of definitive interpretation, Guernica makes an overwhelming impact in its portrayal of the
horrors of war.
Picasso said as he worked on the mural:
“
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.[1]
Detailed description of the painting

In its final form, Guernica is an immense black and white, eleven-and-one-half-foot tall
and almost twenty-six feet wide mural painted in oil. In creating Guernica. The mural
presents a scene of death, violence, brutality, suffering, and helplessness without
portraying their immediate causes. The choice to paint in black and white contrasts with
the intensity of the scene depicted and invokes the immediacy of a newspaper
photograph.

Guernica depicts suffering people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence and
chaos.

The overall scene is within a room, where, at an open end on the left, a wide-eyed bull
stands over a woman grieving over a dead child in her arms.

The center is occupied by a horse falling in agony as it had just been run through by a
spear or javelin. The shape of a human skull forms the horse's nose and upper teeth.

Two "hidden" images formed by the horse appear in Guernica (illustrated to the right):
o A human skull is overlayed on the horse's body.
o A bull appears to gore the horse from underneath. The bull's head is formed
mainly by the horse's entire front leg which has the knee on the ground. The leg's
knee cap forms the head's nose. A horn appears within the horse's breast.

Under the horse is a dead, apparently dismembered soldier, his hand on a severed arm
still grasps a shattered sword from which a flower grows.

A light bulb blazes in the shape of an eye over the suffering horse's head.

To the upper right of the horse, a frightened female figure, who seems to be witnessing
the scenes before her, appears to have floated into the room through a window. Her
arm, also floating in, carries a flame-lit lamp.

From the right, an awe-struck woman staggers towards the center below the floating
female figure. She looks up blankly into the blazing light bulb.

Daggers that suggest screaming replace the tongues of the bull, grieving woman, and
horse.

A bird, possibly a duck, stands on a shelf behind the bull in panic.

On the far right, a figure with arms raised in terror is entrapped by fire from above and
below.

A dark wall with an open door defines the right end of the mural.
Symbolism in Guernica
Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another. This extends, for
example, to the mural's two dominant elements -- the bull and the horse. Art historian Patricia
Failing said, "The bull and the horse are important characters in Spanish culture. Picasso
himself certainly used these characters to play many different roles over time. This has made
the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the bull and the horse very tough. Their
relationship is a kind of ballet that was conceived in a variety of ways throughout Picasso's
career." When pressed to explain them in Guernica, Picasso said, "...this bull is a bull and this
horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true,
but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I
obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the
objects for what they are."