Guernica by Pablo Picasso – Canvas Giclée Print

$139.00$239.00

The high-resolution print revisits the world-famous picture “Guernica” painted 1937 by Pablo Picasso. It is part of the Masterpieces Series at Pigment Pool. With this mural-sized painting the Spanish artist expressed his outrage against war. It was displayed to millions of visitors at the Paris World Fair and has since become one of the most powerful anti-war symbols in history.

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From Pablo Picasso’s early work period till his death, the Spanish artist produced about 147,800 pieces, consisting of 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics and 34,000 illustrations. While a large number of Picasso’s works have been crowned as masterpieces, such as “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” which is said to have set Western abstract art in motion, Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937) stands alone in the artist’s prolific oeuvre. The monumental size of the painting with the larger-than-life figures immerses the viewer in an instant. Although size and figures reference the long tradition of historical European paintings, this painting challenges both in topic and style.

Where is the painting “Guernica” today?

“Guernica” – Madrid:

“La Guernica”, Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece, was first exhibited at the 1937 Paris World Fair’s Spanish Pavilion and soon became the central attraction. When the fair ended, the Spanish Republicans sent the picture on an international tour in order to create awareness of the cruelty of the war. It travelled the world for 19 years before it was loaned to The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The painter of “Guernica” disagreed to have the picture return to Spain until the country “enjoyed public liberties and democratic institutions,” a goal that was finally reached in 1981. Today the painting is part of the permanent collection of the Reina Sofia, Spain’s national museum of modern art in Madrid (Guernica Museo Reina Sofia).

What’s in it? Why did Picasso paint “Guernica”?

Description of the artwork “Guernica”:

At first glance, the composition of the “Guernica” painting by Picasso seems frenzied, the viewer is thrown into the midst of violent action in flux. Similar to Picasso’s blue period before, the Spanish artist now strongly restricted his palette to a monochromatic colouring of shapes in grey, black, and white. Picasso chose this monochromatic palette inspired by his initial encounter with the original newspaper reports, which included black and white photographs. With this color, “Guernica” further suggested objective actuality, such as an eyewitness report. This quality is further underlined through the textured pattern of the composition, which creates the illusion of newsprint. The fluctuation of black and white contrast across the entire surface further creates the energy of jagged movement and dramatic intensity.

The perspective appears ambiguous, and space compressed, offering multiple viewpoints as in other of the artist’s Cubist paintings. Images such as the weeping woman with her dead child in her arms, the partial body of a white bull, and a wounded man with a mutilated hand holden a broken sword, all intersect and overlap, are distorted, and semi-abstracted, letting forms appear ambivalent and fragmentary. While some figures seem flat and slanted, others appear plastic reminiscent of the “Guernica” painter’s sculptures.

Guernica – analysis: 

The composition of Picasso’s “Guernica” is organised in three vertical groups, stabilized by a large triangle of light in the middle. Art historian Anthony Blunt further divides the protagonists of the pyramidal composition into two sections. The first section is made up of the three animals — the wounded horse, the bull, and the winged bird in the background on the left. The second section consists of human beings, encompassing a dead soldier and several women — the wailing mother holding her dead child, a woman leaning out of a window holding a lantern, another one rushing in from the right, and finally the woman with raised arms, crying out to the heavens as a house burns behind her.

“Guernica” – meaning:

The picture “Guernica” with its jumble of tortured figures is full of symbolism and has been interpreted in many ways. Doubtless, with his “Guernica” image, Picasso wanted to challenge the viewer’s notion of warfare, exposing it as a brutal act of human self-destruction. Yet it is characteristic for Picasso’s work that any symbol can encompass many and even contradictory meanings. Therefore, the exact significance of the “Guernica” symbolism remains ambiguous. Picasso himself encouraged the audiences to form their own interpretation upon viewing the picture, refraining to provide fixed readings, saying: “It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise, it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words. The public who looks at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”

What’s the context of “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso (1937)?

Guernica – Pablo Picasso Facts:

In 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain between the democratic Republican government and fascist forces led by General Francisco Franco. Picasso’s “Guernica” painting is based on the events of April 27, 1937, when Hitler’s air force bombed  Guernica, Spain, in support of Franco with the goal of intimidating the Republican resistance. The Guernica bombing and the consecutive fires led to absolute devastation.
Picasso was commissioned by the recently formed Spanish Republican government to paint an artwork for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair. The official theme of the fair was the celebration of new technology. Yet Picasso painted an explicitly political picture referring to the destruction of Guernica.

Although Picasso’s sympathies lay with the new Republic government, Picasso tended to generally avoid politics and disdains political art. But after the ruthless bombing of Guernica, the little Basque village, and stunned by the stark black and white photographs of the scene, he was enraged and decided to make the incident the topic of the artwork for the World Fair. Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” was a protest against war and destruction. Thus, with the Guernica bombing, Picasso became a political artist.

When after three months of work the painting was delivered to the Spanish Pavilion, the initial reaction to the painting was overwhelmingly critical. In the German fair guide, the picture was called “a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted”. And even the Soviets who had supported the Spanish Republicans against Franco and Germany disdained Picasso’s painting “Guernica” believing that only realistic art could make a political impact.

After the Paris World Fair, the picture of “Guernica” first toured Europe, then Northern America, where it raised consciousness about the real threat of fascism. Today, “Guernica” is acclaimed as an artistic masterpiece and as an anti-franco, anti-fascist, and pacific symbol, theorized by numberless art historians and artists.

Chatter and Prattle around Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica”

It is reported that as early as 1939, when World War II broke out, Picasso was surveilled by German Nazis, due at least partially to Guernica’s resounding message. A Nazi soldier once approached Picasso in his Paris studio. Pointing to a reproduction of Guernica, Picasso was asked by him: “Did you do that?” Picasso answered: “No, you did.”

In the decades that followed Picasso’s death, the painting “Guernica” became a demonstration tool in numberless conflicts worldwide. For example, a tapestry replica hung at the entrance to the UN Security Council from 1985 to 2009. Furthermore, it was used in the anti-war protests in the US following the entrance into Iraq in 2003. Whenever the picture is recreated in political contexts, the message usually is a cry for peace in the context of violent conflict.

Unlike Picasso’s other works, his painting “El Guernica” has never been set up for sale, and it has no listed price attached. Yet according to calculations by art historians, some valuations have placed the painting around 200 mn US dollars.

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Recommended Readings:

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Marilyn McCully et al. (2019): Picasso: Blue and Rose Periods

Victoria Charles (2019): Pablo Picasso Masterwoks

Roland Doschka et al. (2000): Pablo Picasso: Metamorphoses of the Human Form : Graphic Works, 1895-1972

Francoise Gilot et al. (2020): Life with Picasso

Christopher Lloyd (2018): Picasso and the Art of Drawing

Size

30 x 68 cm, 40 x 90 cm, 40 x 112 cm, 60 x 135 cm, 70 x 158 cm, 80 x 180 cm

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