Guernica By Pablo Picasso

One of the most famous paintings by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is a mural-sized oil painting on canvas titled Guernica. The painting is Picasso’s horrified reaction to the aerial bombing of civilians populating the Spanish city of Guernica. The work is a contemporary depiction of overwhelming anguish suffered by innocents at the devastating hand of war. The piece was commissioned in 1937 by the Spanish Republican government for the Spanish Pavilion at the upcoming World’s Fair in Paris, and was later displayed at various venues around the world for the purpose of raising funds and awareness on behalf of Spanish war relief. Soon, Guernica became well known and widely praised as a powerful painting with a moving anti-war message.
The event
Thus, history reveals that the true objective of the attack was the weakening and eventual demoralization of the Basques and their Republican government supporters. For roughly three hours on a busy
Picasso painted in the style of cubism and he chose the medium of matte oil paints in black, white, and gray on a 11’5” tall and 25’6” wide canvas. The monochromatic color scheme creates a vast contrast in the painting between the light figures and dark background, which force the viewer to focus on the anguished faces. The color also gives the painting the appearance of a newspaper photo; which, during the 1930’s, was the main medium for news and information. Before the Spanish civil war and the painting of Guernica, Picasso tended to avoid being vocal with regards to politics and activism. But the bombing of Guernica changed that and as he worked on the mural he was quoted as saying, "The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and