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| Advertisement for World Fair in Paris, 1937 |
Pablo Picasso's Guernica is a mural that is 11 feet 6 inches high and 25 feet 8 inches wide (3,5 x 7,76 meters) in size. It was painted on commission for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World Fair in Paris.
Subject and Content:
The subject of this work is the bombing on April 26, 1937 of the Basque city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War by Nazi Germany in support of General Francisco Franco's Nationalists. Many consider it to be the first-ever aerial bombardment of a city. Roughly 1,654 people were killed and 900 injured.
Picasso's painting doesn't focus on the actual bombing, but instead the horrors of war and the misery that results.
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| Guernica, Spain, 1937 |
After the world fair, Picasso offered the painting to the Basque people, but they turned it down. The painting was then exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, then at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, then in various venues around the US, Brazil, and Europe, eventually heading back to Moma in New York.
In February 1974, as stunned visitors looked on helplessly in the 3rd floor gallery of the MOMA, Tony Shafrazi a vandal drew a can of red spray paint from his pocket and scrawled the words "Kill Lies All" on the masterpiece. The man was seized immediately and the red lettering was removed without damage. The curator of the museum said that what saved the painting was a heavy coat of varnish that had acted as a transparent shield.
Picasso had insisted that Guernica would not be exhibited in Spain until democracy had been established. Therefor it was not shown in Spain until 1981. It was initially placed in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, then in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. Campaigners hope to have it moved to Guernica itself, or at least to the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum.
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| Picasso at work on Guernica |
Contemporary artist, Ron English, created work that clearly references Picasso's Guernica.
