Pablo Picasso's Guernica (Lavender Mist)

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, in 1937 is a mural specifically painted to a tragic event of the Bombing of Guernica. Picasso's painting is a response to the bombing of Guernica, During that time the Spanish Republican government commissioned Pablo Picasso to design a large scaled mural for display at the Paris International Exposition in 1937. To Pablo Picasso it was his personal way of expressing his political commitment and loyalty to Spain.

The painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso, is a devastating painting, that shows the cruelty and destruction brought to a country at war. This painting is visually stimulating, and extremely thought provoking, with its enormous size and symbolic caricatures. Picasso, not known for producing political art expresses himself and the lives lost in Guernica through this painting.

When comparing the two art pieces of art, “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso and “Executions of the Third of May” by Goya, you may interpret the underlying meaning to be the same. However, the era in which these paintings were created are noticeably different as well as the techniques. The history in which these two works were created is intriguing. The implicit and explicit similarities and differences between these two historical pieces are astonishing.

To fully appreciate this piece of artwork, one needs not only carefully it’s analyze elements of art, but also research more in depth on Picasso’s history and background. Pablo Picasso was strongly influenced by personal and spiritual contexts throughout his artistic career, which in turn drove him to create some of the most modern and cutting edge work of his time. However, in this 1937 oil painting titled Guernica, his strongest influence was political, more precisely the tragedy and death of war. This painting is said to be depicting the aftermath of the Bombing of Guernica, which took place April 26th, 1937. Along with this bombing, The Spanish Civil War is also taking place at the time, a war between two political parties- the Republicans

Guernica, is a painting made by Pablo Picasso in 1937, and it is a huge mural hanging in the Reina Sofia Museum. Picasso wanted to create a picture that shows the suffering of innocent people in times of war. Also, he wanted a way to express his anger towards what was happening and towards war in general. The painting was made after Picasso learned about the tragedy that struck Guernica town during War World Two. When observing the painting, one can notice it was made using only three colors, white, black, and grey. The symbols in the painting are not always obvious, and one needs to look thoroughly to be able to decipher all of them. However, the images in the painting were arranged to serve a specific purpose, probably to grab the attention

The echo of war resonates in the air of the countries and the hearts of the people it has affected even years after it subsides. When Pablo Picasso created the larger-than-life mural Guernica, it becomes rightly apparent that Picasso wanted it to impact the people so as to gain more support and sympathy for the Spanish Republican cause, but I am not exactly sure if he realized how relatable this painting would be for all of the wars of the future that would follow after World War II. Viewing the painting from an inevitably political perspective, I find the picture to speak loudly to my own views on the necessity of war, particularly on innocent bystanders and civilians, which, from my understanding, relate greatly to Picasso’s own anti-war sentiments.

     In 1937, Pablo Picasso painted Guernica, oil on canvas. The Republican Spanish government commissioned the mural for the 1937 World Fair in Paris. Guernica is a large mural, twenty-six feet wide and eleven feet tall, and was placed at the entrance to Spain’s pavilion. Picasso did not do any work after receiving the commission until reading of the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica, in Spain. It was that attack, perpetrated by the German Luftwaffe, that inspired him. Guernica, however, is not a complete depiction of that event. In Guernica, Picasso masterfully conveys the suffering of the Basque people and the tragedy of war. He seeks not to report on every detail of the bombing, but only to

Art before the 20th century consisted of new styles and three-dimensional spectrums to create the most realistic painting possible. Portraits and landscapes were presented as sort of photographs with a paint brush. Everything required specific fundamentals and anything different would be rejected and labeled degenerate. During this time, foundations were put to the test and it was completely disordered by revolutionary ideas and styles. This art influenced a vast majority of modern day art. Pablo Picasso’s cubism and Henri Matisse fauvism helped shape this era not only in style of painting, but a revolution against conformity of a social artistic structure.

In northwest Spain, bombs were dropped on Guernica, a small Basque market town by the German air force. This caused the Spanish Civil war from 1936 to 1939. The bombing lasted three and a half hours killing hundreds of people. While in Paris, news of the bombing in his country reached Pablo Picasso and he was devastated. This event became an inspiration to him to paint a huge mural that was called Guernica, and becomes the most memorable anti war image in the twentieth century.

Art forms using the technique of painting have evolved throughout history, specifically when female painters became noticed for their success. From the art of the Renaissance style in the 17th century to early 20th century Modernism, there have been eight large art movements to compare painting expansions: Baroque, Neoclassicism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Geometric Abstraction and Surrealism. While these eight movements play off of one another in technique, each reflects its own style using the previous movement as a way to advance the art form as a whole.

The painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso was created in response to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War and it serves to highlight the atrocities that resulted from it. This essay will explore the relationship between art and war, with particular reference to Picasso’s Guernica. This will be achieved my discussing firstly the background that came prior to the painting and to the event itself. Secondly, it will be proved by drawing conclusions on what the painting serves to resemble. Lastly, it will discuss the effects of that the painting Guernica has continued to have even after the Spanish civil war.

The Impressionism movement in art was followed by the Realism and Romantic periods. In complete contrast to Realism and Romanticism, with its detailed, accurate and photo-like paintings of contemporary life, Impressionism brought about more of a blurred reality to the canvas. Specific techniques Impressionist artists used were unblended colors and quick, short brush strokes with a unique play on light. An Impressionist artists' goal was to "objectively paint reality in terms of transient effects of light and color."(1) The Impressionist artist would place vibrantly contrasting colors directly on the canvas; which was a great contrast to the traditional art of blending somber colors. Not understanding, or accepting these new techniques, the Salon of the French Academy consistently rejected most artwork by Impressionist artist. These rejections from the Salon eventually forced a group of Impressionist painters to organize their own exhibitions; Exhibitions of the Independent Artists.

Presumably Picasso's most renowned work, Guernica is likely his most intense political explanation, painted as a quick response to the Nazi's overwhelming easygoing besieging hone on the Basque town of Guernica amid Spanish Common War. About the photo Pablo Picasso says: "My entire life as a craftsman has been just a persistent battle against response and the demise of art. In the photo I am painting — which I should call Guernica — I am communicating my loathsomeness of the military standing which is presently ravaging Spain into a sea of hopelessness and demise." In Guernica, we see a few casualties of the besieging - some as yet living, some officially dead. The figure to one side is a mother gripping an infant who seems to have kicked the

In January 1937, Pablo Picasso accepted the commission for a 25 foot long mural for the Spanish pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (Borja-Villel et al., 2010). This exposition was a creation of the Spanish Government in exile, at the time of the Civil War. Therefore it was imbued with political and diplomatic meanings and served as propaganda for the Republican Government (Borja-Villel et al., 2010). The subject matter of the painting is the attack on the Basque town of Guernica by German planes (Borja-Villel et al., 2010). However, this event per se is not what is highlighted in the painting. Picasso used this scene to demonstrate his personal rejection of war and, taking this further, to demonstrate to the world the costly struggle by the Spanish people in search for freedom (Borja-Villel et al., 2010; Corbin, 1999). As a result, Guernica became to be a worldwide icon for political protest (Kopper, 2014). The

During the Modern Era of the late 19th century and the early 20th century, many artists were turning away from the idea of painting realistic images. Photography, having just been developed for public use a few decades earlier, made artists of the day focus less on painting as an precise copy of what is seen, as had been done for centuries. Since the Middle Ages, most artists painted exact representations of life. Starting in the late 1800s, though, many artists were starting to embrace the theory of art as an impression of what is seen. Impressionism, the art movement that began in the 1870s in France, was the first real development of this new concept of painting. Impressionists, such as Claude Monet, sought to put on canvas how they