European Art
Between the World Wars

Pablo Picasso

Guernica starts as a commissioned painting for the center piece of the Spanish Pavilion in the 1937 World Fair in Paris. Picasso can not decide on a subject for the large mural. In Spain, Franco's Civil War is raging against the republican government.

On April 27th, 1937, Guernica, a little Basque village in Northern Spain is chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's war machine in support of Franco. This is an act of terrorism designed to scare the Spanish people and their government into submission. The village is pounded by the Germans with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. The innocent are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded.

By May 1st, news of the massacre at Guernica reaches Paris. The front pages of Paris papers report the massacre showing black and white pictures of the destruction. More than a million protesters flood the streets to protest this atrocity in the largest May Day demonstration Paris has ever seen. Picasso is appalled by the photographs of the devastation. Although he is anti-political and by principle opposed to political statements in art, he is enraged by this act of terrorism; he sketches the first images for the mural. Three months later it is delivered to the Spanish Pavilion. It meets with much negative criticism from Germany and the press.

After the Paris World Fair, Guernica travels to Europe and Northern America to raise consciousness about the threat of Fascism. From the start of World War II until 1981, Guernica is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It often travels to Europe, and South America.

Although Picasso always intended for the mural to be owned by the Spanish people, he refuses to allow it to travel to Spain until the country enjoys "public liberties and democratic institutions." In 1981 after both Picasso's and Franco's death, and with the reinstitution of the Spanish constitutional monarchy, Guernica moves to its permanent home in Madrid.

On the web and in books Guernica suffers from its presentation size. This picture is huge 11 1/2 feet tall. It dwarfs you by its very presence. Without imagining yourself in the presence of this great mural, it is impossible to feel its effect as art.