Picasso's Guernica.

On 26 April 1937 the Basque town of Guernica was the subject of a cruel bombing by German aircraft, which produced numerous innocent victims and material damage. The fact is part of the development of the Spanish Civil War started on 18 July 1936, and facing the government of the Republic, democratically elected, with Franco's rebel army, rebelled against the legitimate power. While Soviet Stalin helped the Republic, Franco got abundant human and material assistance from Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Aviation latter took the initiative to bomb Guernica on their own, without asking for any permission or notify Franco. The Junker German Luftwaffe planes conducted a carpet-bombing against unprotected villa. The reason for the attack could not be the existence of weapons depots or barracks or troops, or strategic objectives or that the villa was a communications hub. Guernica was devoid of any military or strategic importance.

The shameful reason was tested on real fire new aircraft and weapons before the imminence of World War II. To explain the inexplicable, Franco in a delirious statement blamed the attack on the Republicans and would have gotten an excuse to bombard a city near you, to accuse the Nationalists of Franco. Needless to say, this argument was not taken into consideration by anyone.

The horror caused this episode was very high in international public opinion, not only by the senseless slaughter of innocents, but above all, for being the first time in history that was attacked from the air a city. Soon, English, German and Japanese cities would be wiped off the map with that method.

This type of disaster massacring millions of innocent people and trigger the death toll to outrageous extremes.

THE REPRESENTATION.

Contemplating the work from right to left you can see a desperate woman, screaming in pain inside a house that collapses and burns. On his left two women, the top looks out a window and carrying in his hand a lamp, the light of truth, which illuminates the ravages of barbarism.

In the center of the composition is the horse, twisted on itself and showing a spur; his mouth open and tongue out. Just above is the sun, oval shaped with a bulb at its center as if the smoke bombing had contracted the sun king and the only source of illumination had to be artificial. A to the left a bird flaps its wings and cries to heaven as if vainly had asked an explanation for what happened. Under the horse's feet lies the dead warrior, his hand still holding a broken sword.

On the far left, a bull contemplates surprised and puzzled scene and beside a terrible vision: a mother overwhelmed by grief carries in her arms the little body of her dead son while looking at broken by grief and sorrow sky.

Picasso renunciation of color to accentuate the drama and uses only shades of gray, black and white, is what art is called grisaille.

It is a "sound" box, characters shout, gesticulate and die under the bombs blindly just yet. The denunciation of violence is here timeless and has always been used as a song against the senselessness of destruction and death in any war.

Picasso painted four women in desperate attitudes, are the defenseless civilian population, as the military fallen in the defense and also animals. Una feature that the author uses frequently is the simultaneous representation of several planes on the faces, as if they were seeing both front and profile, hence different from the other eye, producing a global vision.

Technically Guernica has cubist features (reduce natural forms to geometric forms) but also works the expressionism and the extreme gestures of the characters and great purity and definition of lines reminiscent of neoclassicism.

THE MEANING.

Picasso's visit to Spain just before the civil war it is a great curiosity about bullfighting. All its elements are on the table: the bull symbol of strength, brutality and darkness, the horse innocence and indirect victims of all tragedies, the enclosed space and the sword. Bullfighting symbols show here the essence of Spain and suffering.

The light of the lamp illuminates the central scene triangular and very well not know if we're in an indoor or outdoor scene, since the spatial uncertainty does not give us any clue about it. The painting is the most elaborate and thought of Picasso, made 45 sketches or previous studies, which photographed and expanded in order to compose the set of a coherent and expressive way.

THE HISTORY OF ART

After the Spanish Civil War with the defeat of the Republican government's Guernica did not return to Spain, and in fascist hands, but he traveled to M.O.M.A. (Museum of Modern Art) in New York. Picasso express wish, the picture could not return to Spain until our country was a democracy.

With the death of Franco in 1975, Spain recovered the democracy and the picture comes from New York, being exposed in the Cason del Buen Retiro (depending on the Prado for collections of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). Awakens a huge buzz and thousands of people make long lines to contemplate, thus acquiring the character of enduring symbol that characterizes it.

It’s location was recently changed to Centro Reina Sofia National Museum of Art, also in Madrid, where it is currently on display. A few years ago it was requested by the Basque government to expose the Guggenheim arguing that it was a Basque painting but his delicate state of conservation advised against the move. provoked great controversy and Arzallus went on to say "in Madrid have the art and we just bombs". The truth is that the argument that represents a Basque village is not enough to go there. The commission did the government of Madrid, Picasso made a written request to see the Guernica hung in the Prado, the picture is allusive to the war in Spain and, like any work of art is universal, alien to nationalism and sectarianism.

THE AUTHOR

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga in 1881, very young moved to Barcelona and finally settled in Paris.

It went through several stylistic stages as the blue period, pink, cubist and surrealism. He was a true genius of universal painting and a great innovator, constantly delving into new fields of expression artística. He died on the April 8 of 1973.