Pablo Picasso was an influential and a dominant artist during the 20th century. Pablo is well known for cubism, but he also invented collage and contributed significantly to surrealism and symbolism. Pablo Picasso is best remembered for his Guernica oil painting on canvas which he did in 1937. Guernica oil painting a big black and white print that measures 3.49 by 7.77 meters. The focus of this paper is to discuss the reason why Guernica was made and what caused it. The paper will also find the characters, symbols used in the painting, and their associated significance.
The main reason for Pablo's Guernica painting was to portray the horrors of war. As a result, it has become a symbol of anti-war sentiment and a reminder of war's tragedies (Pablo Picasso org, 2018). Many consider Guernica to be the first anti-war painting in history. It expresses anger over the Nazi bombing of Basque city, which took place in northern Spain. The bombing couldn't have happened at a worse time; it happened on market day when packed with children and women because the men were away on the battlefields. The town of Guernica was chosen because it was the first place in the Basque region of Spain to accept democracy. The painting depicts the pain of both animals and humans.
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A series of complex, dying, and screaming children, adults, and animals make up the art in the Guernica painting. The scene in the Guernica painting is set in a room. A donkey, horse, dove, woman, man, crack, and bulb are depicted (Utell, 2016). There is an ailing woman, tongue horse, and the bull have all been pierced by a dagger, and they seem to be screaming. Another woman throwing her arms in agony on the painting's left side; she is engulfed in inferno all over. The way out of the room is illuminated by light from the dark wall. The character in the Guernica painting has a lot of symbolic significance, which makes accurate analysis more difficult. In Spanish culture, the horse and bull are revered. The use of a horse and a bull to play various roles is symbolic of how innocent animals were killed and tortured by the bombing.
Picasso depicted a horse with rolling eyes and enlarged teeth in the painting, and its face is so tragic. At the same time, the bull could well represent war in general and the human need for dominance. A suffering horse symbolizes the death of innocent people. We only see the act of war anywhere else in this painting. Knife-points show the sharpness of the pain in place of the bull's, horse's, and wailing woman's tongues. Appendices are engorged, swollen, and hurt. Mouths open in soundless cries, eyes widen in terror, and innocent people die unjustifiably due to battle.
A dove, part of whose body forms a light through a crack in the wall symbolizing hope, reflects a better tomorrow of peace. The last ray of hope is an oil lamp. When you examine the entire painting closely, you will notice that the scene's illumination is provided by an oil lamp rather than an electric bulb (Fukunaga et al., 2016). The flame appears weak, but it is sufficient to provide illumination to the entire scene, and if it is indeed the spirit of the Spanish people that is exerting it, it is a source of hope for everyone in the background. This analogy explains why the wounded woman below is drawn to the oil lamp.
To conclude, Pablo Picasso made the Guernica painting with the main reason of having it serve as an anti-war symbol and express the sufferings the people and animals underwent due to the bombing of the city of Guernica done by Nazi planes. The painting has remained of great significance, especially the role it plays as an anti-war painting.
References
Fukunaga, K., Ikari, T., & Iwai, K. (2016). THz pulsed time-domain imaging of an oil canvas painting: a case study of a painting by Pablo Picasso. Applied Physics A , 122 (2).
Pablo Picasso org. (2018). 10 Facts About Guernica by Pablo Picasso . Pablo Picasso: 150 Famous Paintings, Bio & Quotes by Picasso. Retrieved April 23, 2021, from https://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp
Utell, J. (2016). Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation, and Change, and: Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation, and Change by Pablo Picasso, Mariah Keller. Modernism/modernity , 23 (3), 677-681.
