Meaning of the painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso

Guernica It is an oil mural painting made in 1937 by the Spanish painter, sculptor and poet Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Málaga, Spain 1881-Mougins, France 1973). It is currently in the Reina Sofía Art Museum in Madrid, Spain.

The painting was commissioned by the government of the Second Republic in Spain for the Spanish pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1937, in the context of the Spanish Civil War. Picasso received no requests on the subject, so it took him some time to find a suitable concept. From this situation, a series of doubts arise regarding the genesis and real theme of the canvas.

Analysis

Guernica It is considered one of the most important paintings of the career of the painter Pablo Picasso and of the 20th century, both due to his political character as well as his style, a mixture of cubist and expressionist elements that make him unique. One wonders what it represents, where it derives its political character and what is the meaning that the painter attributes to it.

What does the box represent Guernica?

At present, there are two theses in debate on what represents the Guernica by Pablo Picaso: the most widespread defends that it is inspired by the historical context of the Spanish Civil War. Another, more recent and scandalous, insists that it is an autobriography.

Historic context

Most sources point out that the table Guernica represents an episode framed in the historical context of the Spanish Civil War. By then, Guernica - located in Vizcaya, Basque Country - was under the control of the Second Republic and had three weapons factories.

Consequently, on April 26, 1937, the town of Villa Vasca de Guernica was bombarded by the Condor Legion of German aviation forces, supported by Italian aviation. The bombing left 127 dead, aroused popular reaction and had an impact on international public opinion.

A possible autobiography

After analyzing the sketches for the canvas and their dating, some researchers have wondered if really Picasso proposed from the beginning a deliberate representation of the bombings on Guernica.

In an article by Macarena García titled What if ‘Guernica’ told another story?, in which the book reviews Guernica: the unknown masterpiece by José María Juarranz de la Fuente (2019), it is reported that the work would have begun to be carried out before the bombings were known.

The initial theme would have been, according to Juarranz, a family autobiographical account of the painter, which runs through his story with his mother, his lovers, and his daughter, who was about to die after giving birth. This hypothesis would have already been suggested by Daniel-Henry Kanhweiler, dealer and biographer of the Malaga painter.

One wonders, can an iconographic analysis confirm or invalidate this interpretation? Let's see next.

It may interest you: 13 essential works to understand Pablo Picasso.

Iconographic description

On Guernica, Picasso applies the technique of oil painting on a large-format canvas. It is a polychrome painting, whose palette includes black, gray, blue and white, so that the painter makes the most of the strong chiaroscuro contrasts that these colors allow.

The painting reflects the duality of two scenes in one: the left part looks like the inside of a house and the right part the outside, united and separated at the same time by thresholds.

The threshold is an important symbol in the artistic imagination. This allows the transit from the inside to the outside and vice versa, and communicates different spaces and worlds. Therefore, when you cross any threshold, you enter a dangerous zone of invisible but real battles: the subconscious.

For the unification of the different aspects of the painting, Picasso uses the technique of cubism synthetic, which consists of drawing a straight line along the painting, thereby unifying the shapes disjointed.

The light in the painting is crucial to show the drama and the connection between the different characters as they are all enlightened and all together in this suffering.

Characters and figures in Guernica

The composition of Guernica features nine characters: four women, a horse, a bull, a bird, a light bulb, and a man.

Women

For Picasso, women are effective in showing suffering and pain, since he attributes that emotional quality to them.

The two women crying out to heaven for justice are one at each end of the painting framing the suffering. The woman on the left cries out for the life of her son, perhaps a symbol of psychic pain, and she reminds us of the iconography of the Piety.

The woman on the right cries out for the fire that consumes her. It probably represents physical pain. Picasso manages to increase the feeling of confinement by circumscribing it in a square.

The other two women create movement from the right towards the center of the work. The smaller woman seems absorbed in the light emanating from the bulb in the center of the room, so her body (diagonally) completes the triangular composition.

The other woman, similar to a ghost, leans out of a window carrying a candle in the direction of the central figure of the horse. She is the only ethereal image and the only one that leaves or enters through a window or threshold, transiting from one world to another.

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Horse

Wounded with a spear, the horse suffers cubist head and neck contortions. From his mouth comes a knife that is his tongue, which points in the direction of the bull.

The bull

The bull on the left side of the painting is surprisingly unmoved. The bull is the only one who looks at the audience and communicates with him in a way that the other characters cannot.

Pablo Picasso, in the 1930s, made the bull a recurring animal in his iconography until he became the symbol of the labyrinth of his life.

The bird (dove)

The bird is very subtle between the two strong animals in the painting: the bull and the horse. But that doesn't stop her from squawking at the heavens in the same way that the women framed on either side of the painting do.

The light bulb

The bulb circumscribed in a kind of eye, with rays like a sun, presides over the whole scene and gives the sensation of observing all the events from the outside.

The interior light bulb plays with the ambiguity and duality of not knowing if it is night or day, interior or exterior. It transports us to a world out of this world.

The man

The man is represented by a single figure, on the ground, with outstretched and fragmented arms.

Located along the ground on the left side, we see his arm severed from him, still wielding a broken sword. next to a single and tiny flower located in the lower center of the painting, perhaps representing the hope.

The stripes on his arm symbolize the flogging. This, together with his open arms reminds us of the crucifixion as a suffering and sacrifice of man.

See also Cubism

Meaning of Guernica

Pablo Picasso managed to say the following about his work:

My work is a cry of denunciation of the war and the attacks of the enemies of the Republic legally established after the elections of 31 (...). Painting is not to decorate apartments, art is an offensive and defensive instrument of war against the enemy. The war in Spain is the battle of reaction against the people, against freedom. On the wall painting that I am working on, and which I will title Guernica, and in all my latest works, I clearly express my revulsion towards the military caste, which has plunged Spain into an ocean of pain and death.

However, Pablo Picasso's belligerent declaration made the work Guernica was considered a propaganda painting. Was she really inspired by the Guernica bombings or did she respond to the propaganda aims of the Spanish left? Paraphrasing José María Juarranz de la Fuente, Macarena García maintains that:

Picasso named Guernica to his work to elevate it in a category and multiply its visibility in Europe, making it a symbol against the fascist barbarism of the Spanish war.

Macarena García summarizes Juarranz de la Fuente's conclusions as follows:

The bull represents Picasso's self-portrait, the woman with the fainted child would represent her lover Marie Thèresse Walter and her daughter Maya in the moment of her birth and the horse would represent her ex-wife Olga Koklova and her pointed tongue to her harsh discussions with her before their separation.

As for the female figure holding a lamp that comes out of a window, José María associates it with the artist's mother at the time of the earthquake that they lived in Malaga ...

In another article titled Is ‘Guernica’ a family portrait of Picasso?, written by Angélica García and published in The country from Spain, reference is also made to the book by Juarranz de la Fuente. In this it is said that:

The warrior lying on the ground is the most controversial interpretation of him, acknowledges the author. He has no doubts that it is the painter Carlos Casagemas, whom he considers that Picasso betrayed during a trip to Malaga.

Beyond determining which interpretation is true, a series of questions arise in us. Does this questioning invalidate the symbolic meaning that has been attributed to the work? Could it be that Picasso had started the project personally and, faced with the event, had given a twist to his preliminary sketches before their final execution? Could it be that he has seen in his own life story the metaphor of a war?

While Picasso's initial motivations may be called into question, the controversy confirms the polysemic nature of art. In any case, it is possible to interpret this discussion as a sign of the ability of the artists, many sometimes unconscious, to transcend the small world of declared intentions and capture senses universal. Perhaps in each work, as in the Aleph from Borges, the living universe hides.