Guernica's Ruin

I remember during my senior year of high school, I was in my spanish class. My teacher started speaking in spanish about the destruction of a little town, Guernica, in Northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War on April 26, 1937. I'm really bad at understanding spanish, (which is disappointing seeing as how I took 4 years of it) but I could comprehend a few words like "bombas," "destrucción masiva," and "mucha gente murió." My teacher told me that the entire town was obliterated and wiped off the map. 1600 people died that day.

Pablo Picasso learned about this atrocity on May 1st in Paris by seeing snapshots of the destruction that was left of Guernica, which inspired him to create a mural in dedication of Guernica.

This tragedy motivated Picasso to create one of his most famous pieces of work. When he began the mural, Picasso changed his sketch over and over again until he could get it just right. It took three months to finish the mural but when he finally revealed the finished product at the Spanish Pavilion in Paris, France, it was recieved with a critical eye. Many people claimed that all the painting was a jumble of mutilated limbs and had no real meaning; "a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted," remarked a German fair guide.

When asked to explain his symbolism, Picasso remarked, "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 look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them." Picasso's words inspired me to not take into account other's interpretation of the mural, but instead come up with my own interpretation.

The black and white color scheme in this mural makes me think of death and ashes, symbolizing the rubble that is left in the wake of the bombing of Guernica. The colors create a mood to the painting, they make me feel dread and sadness, which I believe that Picasso was trying to convey. The jumbling of the animals and the people remind me of chaos and madness. You can barely decipher where the horses legs begin and end and if the body parts lying on the ground are still connected to the man lying on the ground or not. By having so many things going on in this piece, it forces my eyes to move around the mural by trying to figure out what to focus on. Do I focus on the bull? Or the woman with a dead child? The man lying on the ground? Or the horse with a spear through it? The woman with the lamp? Or the man raising his hands high in the air?

The bull at the left of the mural is a very emotional and dramatic image of the terror the townspeople experienced. The bull is normally portrayed as a proud and strong animal and in this painting you can see the horror and fright upon it's face.

The light at the center top is like a symbol of hope, along with the woman who is holding the lamp and looking over the chaos below. The woman holding the lamp almost has a likeness to the Statue of Liberty. Another small thing that caught my eye was the flower that is sprouting up by the borken sword and dismembered arm, symbolizing that through all of this pain and destruction, there is still hope and the people will rise above this. I really love this painting and I love how you can find meaning in even the tiniest of details. Picasso is truly a great artist.