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Pablo Picasso - Picasso the Legend 1937

By the late '30s, Picasso was the most famous artist in the world. He was called upon to depict the brutality of fascist aggression in the Spanish Civil War with his monumental "Guernica".

Guernica (1937)

Most people do not even know that the ancient Basque village Guernica exits, let alone that one third of its citizens were senselessly slaughtered or wounded in little more than three hours. On April 26, 1937, German bombers attacked Guernica, an open city. The unprovoked attack began at 4:30, the busiest hour of a market day. The streets were jammed with townspeople and peasants from the countryside. Never before in modern warfare had noncombatants been slaughtered in such numbers, and by such means

The word art is an encompassing one, vastly interpreted and with multiple definitions. In the case of Picasso's painting Guernica, art informs, educates and expresses. Its power lies in its ability to capture and compel an audience nearly six decades after the modern world's "other" day of infamy. To understand fully the painting that evolved out of the Spanish painter's outrage, one must know its context.

Picasso incorporated the same complex layering of imagery and themes in the 1934 drawing as he used in "Guernica" and in many respects it is the same composition. Severed arms, subliminal skulls, bull's heads, spears* and the diagonally divided dark and light tones are common to both as are a number of important structural features.

Guernica. Detail. 1937. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.