Guernica is a famous painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the consequences of the bombing of Guernica. Picasso, commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to paint a picture to decorate the Spanish Pavilion during the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris), created this massive (3.49 metres x 7.76 metres [1]) Cubist work.
The painting depicts people, animals, and buildings wrenched by the violence and chaos of the carpet-bombing, as well as the outline of a skull formed by various objects. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war, and the cruelty of bombing civilians. The choice to paint in black and white without color contrasts the screaming intensity of the scene depicted.
The painting makes use of imagery that had permeated Picasso's work since the early 1930s: "the ritual of the corrida, the myth of the minotaur, images of Christian martyrdom and suffering women." It was executed with great speed: Guernica was attacked April 26, 1937 and the Spanish Pavillion opened in July of the same year. Dora Maar, Picasso's lover at the time, made an extensive photographic record of the execution of the piece. [Hoberman 2004]
After the fair, when the Republican government had fallen, Picasso refused to allow this painting, one of his most famous, to be displayed in Spain until the Spanish people enjoyed "public liberties and democratic institutions". It therefore spent many years on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. Picasso died in 1973 and did not live to see the end of the Franco regime. After the death of Franco in 1975, Spain was transformed into a democratic constitutional monarchy, ratified by a new constitution in 1978. However, the Museum of Modern Art were reluctant to give up one of their greatest treasures and argued that a constitutional monarchy did not represent a true democracy. Under great pressure from a number of observers, MOMA finally ceded the painting to Spain in 1981.
During the 1970s, it was a symbol for Spaniards of both the end of the Franco regime and of Basque nationalism.
It is now in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, along with about two dozen preparatory works. The exact ___location was controversial in Spain, since Picasso's will stated that the painting should be displayed at the Prado Museum. However, as in the late 20th century the Prado moved all of its collections of art after the early 19th century to other nearby buildings in the city for reasons of space, the Reina Sofía, which houses the capital's national collection of 20th century art, seems the appropriate place for it. A special gallery was built at the Reina Sofía to display Picasso's masterpiece to best advantage. Basque nationalists claimed that it should be brought to the Basque country, especially after the building of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. However, the huge canvas is now thought to be too fragile to move.
Guernica at the United Nations
A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war. On January 27, 2003, a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration leaned on UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq.
See also
References
- Hoberman, J. "Pop and Circumstance". The Nation, December 13, 2004, 22-26.