Picasso, living at the time in Paris, read about the attack in the newspaper and was subsequently inspired to create what has become one of his great masterpieces. The canvas reaches 20x30 feet making the viewing experience almost immersive and all the more powerful. Painted almost entirely in black and white, the painting refers to Picasso’s second-hand experience of the event by alluding to newspaper images. As a Spanish native who spent his early life living all throughout the country, news of the bombing of Guernica was especially horrific.
Franco chose the small city of Guernica (or as the Basques spell it: Gernika) because though not the largest in the region, it was the official seat of the Basque government and very symbolic in Basque identity. The Basque region straddling the border of Spain and France has long expressed separtist leanings with many hoping for autonomy, and this would not be acceptable in Franco’s desire to build a new Spain. Though born in the south of Spain, Picasso spent four years in A Coruna, a town in Galicia in western Spain, and his teenage years in Barcelona, the major cultural and political centre of Catalonia. Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque region each harbor unique identies within Spain and Gallego, Catalan, and Euskera respectively are official languages in addition to Spanish. It is likely that the experiences of his youth led to an even greater sympathy for the Basque people. The painting was initially displayed at the 1937 Paris International Exposition in the Spanish pavilion attracting great attention to the artist and the tragic event. With Europe on the brink of the Second World War, the fear expressed in the painting was soon to become reality for many.
Today Guernica resides in the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid’s modern and contemporary art museum, though it spent a considerable amount of time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Picasso and others felt the painting would not be safe while Franco was in power, so until the dictator passed away in 1975, the painting was held across the Atlantic Ocean to protect it from being destroyed eventually returning to spain in 1981.
