12 / Conflict and Resistance

Strong, aggressive, dictatorial regimes were in control of both Germany and Russia, and Spain was in the midst of a civil war. Headed by General Francisco Franco and backed by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Nationalists in Spain had risen up against leftist republican leaders the previous year. Thus, when the embattled Spanish government decided to participate in the 1937 Exposition, its aim, at least in part, was to rally the support of the international community. To this end, the politically sympathetic expatriate Pablo Picasso was commissioned to create a mural for the nation’s pavilion at the fair.

The twenty-five-foot-wide painting that Picasso eventually produced was a direct response to an incident that occurred shortly before the Expo’s opening. On April 26, 1937, Nazi airplanes firebombed Guernica, completely destroying the small Basque town and killing about 1,500 civilians. Named for the town where the attack took place, Picasso’s Guernica is an image of chaos and violence. A woman flees a burning house on the far right. At center, a dying horse, stabbed with a spear, stands above a severed arm holding a broken sword. On the far left, a woman, clutching a dead baby, cries out in anguish. With a palette comprised solely of black, white, and gray, Guernica evokes the look of newspaper, not only referencing the means by which word of such events spread, but also emphasizing the documentary nature of the work itself. At the same time, the absence of color suggests the mourning of a tragedy.

The organizers of the Spanish Pavilion who had commissioned the work from Picasso had wanted it to convey their dire situation as clearly as possible. They worried, upon seeing Guernica, that its use of abstraction and symbolism would prove too difficult for the public to understand. Their fears, however, seem to have been unfounded. Communicating on its own terms, the image expressed the horror of what happened in Guernica with an intensity and palpability that still resonates today. Ultimately, the work is not just a lament of what happened in one small town, but a condemnation of war in general.