Guernica: Testimony of War
It is modern art's most powerful antiwar
statement... created by the twentieth century's most well-known and least
understood artist. But the mural called Guernica is not at all what Pablo Picasso has in mind when he
agrees to paint the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World's
Fair.
For three months, Picasso has been searching
for inspiration for the mural ...On April 27th, 1937, unprecedented atrocities are perpetrated on behalf
of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in
northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler's burgeoning
war machine, the hamlet is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for
over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling
buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are
killed or wounded.
...Eyewitness reports fill the front pages of
Paris papers. Picasso is stunned by the stark black and
white photographs. Appalled and enraged, Picasso rushes through the crowded
streets to his studio, where he quickly sketches the first images for the mural
he will call Guernica. His search for inspiration is over.
From the beginning, Picasso chooses not to
represent the horror of Guernica
in realist or romantic terms. Key figures - a woman with outstretched arms, a
bull, an agonized horse - are refined in sketch after sketch, then transferred
to the capacious canvas, which he also reworks several times. "A painting
is not thought out and settled in advance," said Picasso. "While it
is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it
goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at
it."
Source: Guernica: Testimony of War Treasures of the World
© 1999 Stoner Production Inc.
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