Pablo Picasso Influence
Every piece of artwork has a driving force behind the making of it. It could be as simple as an emotional feeling at a certain point in an artist’s life, or it could be as complicated as the political events taking place around an artist. Some artworks have multiple influences on them. Guernica, an internationally recognized anti-war symbol designed and painted by Pablo Picasso, was produced in response to the immense devastation, chaos, and disgust of the Spanish Civil War, or more specifically the German bombing of Guernica, Spain, as well as traditional yet iconic aspects of Spanish culture, like bullfighting.
Way before Picasso began his work on Guernica, Spain was beginning its downward spiral that would result in the Spanish Civil War …show more content…
and total devastation. After the conclusion of the First World War and a slowing of global immigration, workers around Spain grew increasingly militant because of deteriorating conditions, a result of uncertainty about the future. Strikes and uprisings existed almost everywhere, and the Spanish government was having a hard time keeping the violence under control. In 1923, Miguel Primo de Rivera assumed power by means of overthrowing the state; he is considered the first modern dictator of Spain. As the unrest and violence persisted, Primo de Rivera was forced to declare a state of war in an attempt to “halt any unrest or protests” (Beevor 136). Industrialists and the liberal middle class welcomed Primo de Rivera’s assumption to power because he had a conservative stance, a concern with improving Spain, and he came at a tense time for the Spanish (Beevor 137). However, the peace and welcoming did not last long.
It began in Catalonia when the Catalans started to develop a dislike toward Primo de Rivera’s rule because he was not dealing with their union leaders in a proper manner. According to Antony Beevor, he, also, enjoyed attacking all aspects of Catalan nationalism (Beevor 140). But, the unrest did not stop there. It grew as Primo de Rivera stretched his influence into the efforts to ‘modernize’ Spain (Beevor 142). Before long, a Republican alliance against the rule of Primo de Rivera emerged in the Basque country. As a result, the Basque country became known as the Republican stronghold and a place for Republicans to gather (Beevor 146). Eventually, the Spanish overthrew Primo de Rivera and ushered in a Second Republic.
In 1931, “municipal elections” were held with leftist parties, like the socialists and liberal Republicans, winning “almost all the provincial capitals of Spain” (Beevor 149). However, this new government inherited all the economic mistakes and problems that existed in Primo de Rivera’s rule (Beevor 154). This new government, also, declared that Spain had stopped being Catholic; consequently, a huge rift between the state and the Catholic Church was born. For the next two elections, power shifted from the left to the right and back to the left. All the while, divides within the political sphere were taking place, and right-wing parties (Falange, Fascism, etc.) rose to the stage. These right-wing parties had one thing in common: they hated the Republic and everything it stood for. In July of 1936, Spain took a turn for the worse when Francisco Franco, a right-wing individual, “led an army rebellion against the democratically elected Spain,” and the Spanish Civil War broke out (Power of Art).
The two sides of the Spanish Civil War were the two Spains that had emerged as a result of the political divide. Simon Schama, art historian, explained that one Spain was the modern, secular Spain that consisted of thriving socialist movements; they called themselves the Republic. The other Spain was the ancient Spain that was comprised of estates and poverty-stricken peasantry; they called themselves the Nationalists. The Nationalists wanted to return to the ‘golden days’ of Spain that were governed by laws and family values conditioned by the Catholic Church’s values. Neither side wanted to hold elections in order to find out what the people wanted, and both claimed that they were the “true Spain” (Power of Art). So, they fought each other in a brutal and gruesome civil war.
Battle after battle devastated the Spanish countryside. In the Basque country, bomb raids flattened towns. Guernica, a town in the Basque country, was looked at as the stronghold of the Republican resistance movement; individuals involved in this movement came from all backgrounds, but they all had a common opposition to the Nationalists and Francisco Franco (Power of Art). This movement was never a specific target for Franco’s military. But, with that said, researchers have found evidence that Franco planned to intimidate and send a message about his power to those in Guernica as well as “demolish ‘civilian morale’” (“Guernica.”).
At 4:30 pm on Monday, April 26, 1937, a German Colonel commanded his warplanes to preform an aerial bombing of Guernica (Ray 2006). The command was given by a German commander and executed by the German military because they were supporting Franco in return for the chance to test out their new weapon technology. The bombing lasted for at least two hours, and over 5,000 bombs were dropped on this humble town (Power of Art). According to the Republicans, just as the first bombs struck, the streets were bustling with women and children going about their daily tasks; there were not many men in town during the bombing because a vast majority was out fighting in the war. However, not all reports are consistent with the Republicans’ account of the demographics of Guernica at the time of the bombing. The town, by the end, was almost leveled and “reduc[ed]…to a burning fireball” (Hensbergen 3). Buildings had collapsed, and if they were still standing, they were unsafe to enter. Roads were physically impassable, and bodies of women and children littered the town. This destruction made it impossible for residents to escape their impending death (“Guernica.”).
At the time of the Guernica bombing, Pablo Picasso was living in Paris, France.
He cared very little about politics and did not express much about his political views. Picasso had been commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to work on a painting for the upcoming Paris Exhibition. He knew about the intense situation in Spain but did not know about the Guernica bombing until a London Times journalist, George Steer, wrote a front-page story chronicling it. The reports were extremely graphic and were circulated around the globe. After reading the story, Picasso immediately thinks about the situation in Madrid; the Prado in Madrid had been hit by bombings as well. According to Schama, Picasso felt “personally assaulted” (Power of Art), a “sense of revulsion” (Hensbergen 3), and felt a responsibility to protect his Spanish heritage and his fellow Spanish artists, like Francisco Goya, whose art was in the Prado at the time of the bombings. On the subject of Guernica, Picasso said, “Guernica had gone cubist,” and he felt the need to showcase the results. With Guernica being the last straw for Picasso, he made it his mission to tell the truth about the scenes in Guernica (because Franco had tried to place the blame for the bombing as the work of Basque communists, and Picasso knew that that was far from the truth) and express his disgust with the people who “sunk Spain with a notion of pain” (Power of Art). So, he abandoned his commission for the Paris Exhibition and began work on Guernica, using images that “spoke to the horrors that humans have visited on each other for millennia” (Martin
2003).
Guernica is a 3.5 meter by 7.8 meter black and white painted mural. It has come to be seen as a description of the havoc of war and the hurt it causes to all those involved. Picasso’s decision to have an absence of color strengthens the drama and intensity of the piece as well as produces a painting that resembles a photograph (Ray 2006). It has been compared to photographs found in Ce Soir of the Guernica aftermath, and these photographs have been found to be a driving force behind the mural (Hensbergen). During the painting process, Picasso painted and over-painted aspects to produce a cohesive piece. For example, the woman in the window was over-painted with breasts to make it clear that she was a female. To produce the final product that is recognized today, Picasso worked tirelessly and went through numerous drafts to evoke the right emotion and depiction that was constantly running through his mind.
Picasso, right after hearing about the devastation the bombings brought, quickly put down his ideas for Guernica in pencil sketches. Research has found at least 40 sketches that were done in the week before he began work on the final mural. In his early versions, a clinched, socialist fist was sketched rising from the dead bodies. This did not make it to the final version for unknown reasons. Another part that does not appear in the final is a Pegasus emerging from the gapping black hole in the horse. Picasso, before scrapping it, believed it would represent that good things can come from blood. However, after surveying the brutality of the Spanish Civil War, Picasso had begun to believe that nothing good could possibly come from this war (Power of Art). Even though some of his original ideas did not make the cut, Guernica is a complicated mess of chaos and symbols from the April 1937 bombings on Guernica. Guernica represents the chaos and destruction after the German bombs were dropped on the small town in the Spanish Basque country. The entire painting makes reference to the bombings, especially with the title. However, some researchers have attributed it to be a representation of the chaos of war in general. Researchers have also analyzed each and every inch of the painting and its characters. They have come up with theories on what everything represents and have come up with connections between historical situations and characters in the painting.
Russell Martin has a theory that Picasso took inspiration from the “violence, suffering, and passion of the bullring” (Martin 2003) that he visited on numerous occasions. The left half of the mural contains a horse and a bull. Like in the bullring, Picasso expressed that the bull signifies “brutality and darkness” (“Guernica.”); the bull is the enemy and symbolizes the dehumanization of people during times of war. A gapping, black hole dominates the center of the horse (Power of Art), like that from a bull horn. Light black, vertical strokes cover the horse’s body. These lines are unreadable, and Beverly Ray has hypothesized that they appear like a newspaper reel and reflect how Picasso learned of the devastation in Guernica. To connect the war to the bull and horse, Ray has gone as far as to say that the bull represents the beginning of Fascist ideas and the horse represents the hurting people of Guernica (Ray 2006).
Overlapping the bull is a mother holding her dead child. The woman is looking to the sky with eyes shaped like tears to represent the hurt of losing her child to war. Going back in history, Picasso appears to have taken inspiration from the numerous Catholic images of the Virgin Mary holding her martyred son (“Guernica.”). However, this image, more obviously, represents the women and children in Guernica who were terrorized by the bombings. To the far right is a woman who is trapped in a burning building; photographs and reports about flaming buildings trapping residents inside influenced this particular scene. Some have also seen this woman as a ghostly reminder of the Spanish Republic that was ‘going up in flames’ (“Guernica.”). Picasso may have foretold the future with Franco taking over Spain in 1939.
Within the entire mural, one male can be found; the male is a dead soldier on the left side beneath the bull. His limbs are no longer connected to his body and are scattered around the scene. The impersonal warfare and tactics used by the Nationalist side during the war influenced Picasso’s design of the soldier. In one of the soldier’s hands is a lonesome, faint daisy. Simon Schama sees this as the only symbol of hope within this dark representation of war. On the soldier’s other hand is a puncture wound. According to Schama, this represents “the stigmata of the martyred Christ.” Schama believes that Picasso’s plan with the wound was to turn the table on the holy people involved in the Civil War. This image of a fallen soldier with religious marks was influenced by a picture published of a dead priest with his arms stretched out among the rubble of Guernica (Power of Art).
A light bulb, located at the top in the dead center, illuminates the entire scene. Not all researchers agree on this being a representation of a light bulb; some hypothesize that it symbolizes the sun, referencing the time of the bombing. If looked at as a light bulb, it reflects the technological advances that the Germans used in the weapons to bomb Guernica. Similarly, the Spanish word for bulb is “bombilla,” which is similar to the Spanish word for bomb, “bomba” (“Guernica.”). The light could represent the flashes of bombs that the residents of Guernica witnessed and were terrified of during the aerial bombing. Or, it could be the searchlight of the bombers looking for survivors to terrorize.
The gruesome results and his disdain for the Spanish Civil War, especially the aerial bombing of Guernica, and typical Spanish cultural activities, like bullfighting, influenced Pablo Picasso’s black and white mural titled Guernica. Picasso felt a responsibility to produce a work that represented the chaos that ensued during Franco’s bombings; he wanted to world to witness the truth, and he did just that. When Picasso had completed Guernica, a Nationalist officer appeared in Picasso’s apartment. The officer stared at a photo of the mural and asked with disdain, “Did you do that?” Picasso, kindly, responded, “No, you did!” (Power of Art).
Way before Picasso began his work on Guernica, Spain was beginning its downward spiral that would result in the Spanish Civil War …show more content…
and total devastation. After the conclusion of the First World War and a slowing of global immigration, workers around Spain grew increasingly militant because of deteriorating conditions, a result of uncertainty about the future. Strikes and uprisings existed almost everywhere, and the Spanish government was having a hard time keeping the violence under control. In 1923, Miguel Primo de Rivera assumed power by means of overthrowing the state; he is considered the first modern dictator of Spain. As the unrest and violence persisted, Primo de Rivera was forced to declare a state of war in an attempt to “halt any unrest or protests” (Beevor 136). Industrialists and the liberal middle class welcomed Primo de Rivera’s assumption to power because he had a conservative stance, a concern with improving Spain, and he came at a tense time for the Spanish (Beevor 137). However, the peace and welcoming did not last long.
It began in Catalonia when the Catalans started to develop a dislike toward Primo de Rivera’s rule because he was not dealing with their union leaders in a proper manner. According to Antony Beevor, he, also, enjoyed attacking all aspects of Catalan nationalism (Beevor 140). But, the unrest did not stop there. It grew as Primo de Rivera stretched his influence into the efforts to ‘modernize’ Spain (Beevor 142). Before long, a Republican alliance against the rule of Primo de Rivera emerged in the Basque country. As a result, the Basque country became known as the Republican stronghold and a place for Republicans to gather (Beevor 146). Eventually, the Spanish overthrew Primo de Rivera and ushered in a Second Republic.
In 1931, “municipal elections” were held with leftist parties, like the socialists and liberal Republicans, winning “almost all the provincial capitals of Spain” (Beevor 149). However, this new government inherited all the economic mistakes and problems that existed in Primo de Rivera’s rule (Beevor 154). This new government, also, declared that Spain had stopped being Catholic; consequently, a huge rift between the state and the Catholic Church was born. For the next two elections, power shifted from the left to the right and back to the left. All the while, divides within the political sphere were taking place, and right-wing parties (Falange, Fascism, etc.) rose to the stage. These right-wing parties had one thing in common: they hated the Republic and everything it stood for. In July of 1936, Spain took a turn for the worse when Francisco Franco, a right-wing individual, “led an army rebellion against the democratically elected Spain,” and the Spanish Civil War broke out (Power of Art).
The two sides of the Spanish Civil War were the two Spains that had emerged as a result of the political divide. Simon Schama, art historian, explained that one Spain was the modern, secular Spain that consisted of thriving socialist movements; they called themselves the Republic. The other Spain was the ancient Spain that was comprised of estates and poverty-stricken peasantry; they called themselves the Nationalists. The Nationalists wanted to return to the ‘golden days’ of Spain that were governed by laws and family values conditioned by the Catholic Church’s values. Neither side wanted to hold elections in order to find out what the people wanted, and both claimed that they were the “true Spain” (Power of Art). So, they fought each other in a brutal and gruesome civil war.
Battle after battle devastated the Spanish countryside. In the Basque country, bomb raids flattened towns. Guernica, a town in the Basque country, was looked at as the stronghold of the Republican resistance movement; individuals involved in this movement came from all backgrounds, but they all had a common opposition to the Nationalists and Francisco Franco (Power of Art). This movement was never a specific target for Franco’s military. But, with that said, researchers have found evidence that Franco planned to intimidate and send a message about his power to those in Guernica as well as “demolish ‘civilian morale’” (“Guernica.”).
At 4:30 pm on Monday, April 26, 1937, a German Colonel commanded his warplanes to preform an aerial bombing of Guernica (Ray 2006). The command was given by a German commander and executed by the German military because they were supporting Franco in return for the chance to test out their new weapon technology. The bombing lasted for at least two hours, and over 5,000 bombs were dropped on this humble town (Power of Art). According to the Republicans, just as the first bombs struck, the streets were bustling with women and children going about their daily tasks; there were not many men in town during the bombing because a vast majority was out fighting in the war. However, not all reports are consistent with the Republicans’ account of the demographics of Guernica at the time of the bombing. The town, by the end, was almost leveled and “reduc[ed]…to a burning fireball” (Hensbergen 3). Buildings had collapsed, and if they were still standing, they were unsafe to enter. Roads were physically impassable, and bodies of women and children littered the town. This destruction made it impossible for residents to escape their impending death (“Guernica.”).
At the time of the Guernica bombing, Pablo Picasso was living in Paris, France.
He cared very little about politics and did not express much about his political views. Picasso had been commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to work on a painting for the upcoming Paris Exhibition. He knew about the intense situation in Spain but did not know about the Guernica bombing until a London Times journalist, George Steer, wrote a front-page story chronicling it. The reports were extremely graphic and were circulated around the globe. After reading the story, Picasso immediately thinks about the situation in Madrid; the Prado in Madrid had been hit by bombings as well. According to Schama, Picasso felt “personally assaulted” (Power of Art), a “sense of revulsion” (Hensbergen 3), and felt a responsibility to protect his Spanish heritage and his fellow Spanish artists, like Francisco Goya, whose art was in the Prado at the time of the bombings. On the subject of Guernica, Picasso said, “Guernica had gone cubist,” and he felt the need to showcase the results. With Guernica being the last straw for Picasso, he made it his mission to tell the truth about the scenes in Guernica (because Franco had tried to place the blame for the bombing as the work of Basque communists, and Picasso knew that that was far from the truth) and express his disgust with the people who “sunk Spain with a notion of pain” (Power of Art). So, he abandoned his commission for the Paris Exhibition and began work on Guernica, using images that “spoke to the horrors that humans have visited on each other for millennia” (Martin
2003).
Guernica is a 3.5 meter by 7.8 meter black and white painted mural. It has come to be seen as a description of the havoc of war and the hurt it causes to all those involved. Picasso’s decision to have an absence of color strengthens the drama and intensity of the piece as well as produces a painting that resembles a photograph (Ray 2006). It has been compared to photographs found in Ce Soir of the Guernica aftermath, and these photographs have been found to be a driving force behind the mural (Hensbergen). During the painting process, Picasso painted and over-painted aspects to produce a cohesive piece. For example, the woman in the window was over-painted with breasts to make it clear that she was a female. To produce the final product that is recognized today, Picasso worked tirelessly and went through numerous drafts to evoke the right emotion and depiction that was constantly running through his mind.
Picasso, right after hearing about the devastation the bombings brought, quickly put down his ideas for Guernica in pencil sketches. Research has found at least 40 sketches that were done in the week before he began work on the final mural. In his early versions, a clinched, socialist fist was sketched rising from the dead bodies. This did not make it to the final version for unknown reasons. Another part that does not appear in the final is a Pegasus emerging from the gapping black hole in the horse. Picasso, before scrapping it, believed it would represent that good things can come from blood. However, after surveying the brutality of the Spanish Civil War, Picasso had begun to believe that nothing good could possibly come from this war (Power of Art). Even though some of his original ideas did not make the cut, Guernica is a complicated mess of chaos and symbols from the April 1937 bombings on Guernica. Guernica represents the chaos and destruction after the German bombs were dropped on the small town in the Spanish Basque country. The entire painting makes reference to the bombings, especially with the title. However, some researchers have attributed it to be a representation of the chaos of war in general. Researchers have also analyzed each and every inch of the painting and its characters. They have come up with theories on what everything represents and have come up with connections between historical situations and characters in the painting.
Russell Martin has a theory that Picasso took inspiration from the “violence, suffering, and passion of the bullring” (Martin 2003) that he visited on numerous occasions. The left half of the mural contains a horse and a bull. Like in the bullring, Picasso expressed that the bull signifies “brutality and darkness” (“Guernica.”); the bull is the enemy and symbolizes the dehumanization of people during times of war. A gapping, black hole dominates the center of the horse (Power of Art), like that from a bull horn. Light black, vertical strokes cover the horse’s body. These lines are unreadable, and Beverly Ray has hypothesized that they appear like a newspaper reel and reflect how Picasso learned of the devastation in Guernica. To connect the war to the bull and horse, Ray has gone as far as to say that the bull represents the beginning of Fascist ideas and the horse represents the hurting people of Guernica (Ray 2006).
Overlapping the bull is a mother holding her dead child. The woman is looking to the sky with eyes shaped like tears to represent the hurt of losing her child to war. Going back in history, Picasso appears to have taken inspiration from the numerous Catholic images of the Virgin Mary holding her martyred son (“Guernica.”). However, this image, more obviously, represents the women and children in Guernica who were terrorized by the bombings. To the far right is a woman who is trapped in a burning building; photographs and reports about flaming buildings trapping residents inside influenced this particular scene. Some have also seen this woman as a ghostly reminder of the Spanish Republic that was ‘going up in flames’ (“Guernica.”). Picasso may have foretold the future with Franco taking over Spain in 1939.
Within the entire mural, one male can be found; the male is a dead soldier on the left side beneath the bull. His limbs are no longer connected to his body and are scattered around the scene. The impersonal warfare and tactics used by the Nationalist side during the war influenced Picasso’s design of the soldier. In one of the soldier’s hands is a lonesome, faint daisy. Simon Schama sees this as the only symbol of hope within this dark representation of war. On the soldier’s other hand is a puncture wound. According to Schama, this represents “the stigmata of the martyred Christ.” Schama believes that Picasso’s plan with the wound was to turn the table on the holy people involved in the Civil War. This image of a fallen soldier with religious marks was influenced by a picture published of a dead priest with his arms stretched out among the rubble of Guernica (Power of Art).
A light bulb, located at the top in the dead center, illuminates the entire scene. Not all researchers agree on this being a representation of a light bulb; some hypothesize that it symbolizes the sun, referencing the time of the bombing. If looked at as a light bulb, it reflects the technological advances that the Germans used in the weapons to bomb Guernica. Similarly, the Spanish word for bulb is “bombilla,” which is similar to the Spanish word for bomb, “bomba” (“Guernica.”). The light could represent the flashes of bombs that the residents of Guernica witnessed and were terrified of during the aerial bombing. Or, it could be the searchlight of the bombers looking for survivors to terrorize.
The gruesome results and his disdain for the Spanish Civil War, especially the aerial bombing of Guernica, and typical Spanish cultural activities, like bullfighting, influenced Pablo Picasso’s black and white mural titled Guernica. Picasso felt a responsibility to produce a work that represented the chaos that ensued during Franco’s bombings; he wanted to world to witness the truth, and he did just that. When Picasso had completed Guernica, a Nationalist officer appeared in Picasso’s apartment. The officer stared at a photo of the mural and asked with disdain, “Did you do that?” Picasso, kindly, responded, “No, you did!” (Power of Art).