The year is 1937 and Spain is in the middle of a civil war between the Nationalist forces and the ruling Republican forces. The famous Pablo Picasso has been commissioned to paint the mural centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair in Paris. His inspiration for the mural arrived when the Condor Legion took flight over the small Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain on April 26, 1937. The elite unit of the German Luftwaffe laid waste to the small town using carpet bombing tactics and cutting down anyone who tried to escape from the crumbling town. In the small town of originally 5,000 people, there were probably more people in town because it was a market day, 1,600 people were slaughtered after the town burned for three days. The Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco denied any involvement in the attack as did the German government. The town of Guernica had no strategical value but was the central location for the Basque people. Having finally found inspiration Picasso painted the above piece of art, Guernica, which depicts the tragedy of war through appeals to pathos, ethos, and the logical constructs of allegory and symbolism.
Picasso himself had a fascination with bullfighting and many of his works reflect this. In Guernica the bullfight is somewhat untraditional. There is no matador, instead the fight is between the bull and the horse. The bull, depicted on the far left, which can be interpreted as Franco who was responsible for the tragedy at Guernica. The horse, shown as the central point, is skewered by a lance to symbolize the slaughter of the people of Guernica. The absence of a matador, which would represent the Republican Spanish Government at the time, shows the lack of involvement the government had in controlling the situation. In this the bull fight is an allegory for war. The twisted nature of this bull fight, in that it is bull vs. horse, illustrates the twisted and gruesome reality of war. The bombing of Guernica was not part of the civil war between the Republican and Nationalist forces. It was instead a slaughter of a noncombatant village by the fascist allies of Franco and so the bull fight was not between a man and a bull. Using the bull as a symbol for Franco and his Nationalists establishes a certain ethos. Bulls are characterized as aggressive, often mean, and masculine animals. On the contrast using the usually docile horse as a symbol for the citizens of Guernica also establishes a specific ethos. To convey the argument that the bombing of Guernica was an unjustified massacre it is logical to represent the victims as the less aggressive animal and the aggressor as the more aggressive. It would not make much sense if the people of Guernica were portrayed as a more dominant animal. The stark contrast between the characterizations of bulls and horses builds upon the idea that this attack was one-sided. Through the logos concept of cause and effect Picasso makes the statement that if you go to war, death and destruction will follow and often times the casualties are not limited to the combatant. The civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans cause the noncombatant Basque village of Guernica to become a target.
Appeals to pathos are everywhere in Guernica and prove to be tremendously effective. The choice of Picasso to only use black, white, and gray helps to convey the depressing and somber reality of war. This limited color palette of blacks, whites, and grays is common among the earlier analytical cubist works. The use of various shades expresses the idea that not everything is black and white. The extremely dark shades used in conjunction with the black background set the mood as dark and brooding.The graphic images of a dismembered soldier still clutching a broken sword, the skewered horse, the burning woman, and the weeping mother all work to invoke sorrow and dread upon the audience. The weeping mother who is holding her dead child in her arms with her head raised skyward and mouth open screaming conveys tremendous sorrow. The tongues of the mother and the horse are sharp triangular shapes which emphasize the harshness of the emotions they are expressing. Picasso's cubist style, which uses geometrical shapes and attempts to display all the perspectives of an object on a two dimensional plane, and allegory of the bull fight themselves dehumanize the mural to depict the inhumanness of war.
The arrangement of the individual aspects of the mural also are important. The horse is placed in the center to emphasize the importance of its ideal in the piece. Also to emphasize the horse there is a light shining down upon it. The bull is however placed on the outskirts of the piece and appears to be looking away from the scene in the middle. This action of looking away by the bull gives the feeling that Franco, didn't care about the people of Guernica and just looked the other way will the German Luftwaffe used the town as bombing practice. The absence of the symbol for the Spanish Government, the matador who is the usual opponent for the bull, relays the feeling that the government really didn’t do anything to stop the horse from being slaughtered. The chaotic imagery of the mural shows the chaotic nature of war. Within all the death and destruction there is hope. A flower grows out of the sword of the fallen soldier. The flower is a symbol of new life. The fact that it is sprouting up from death symbolizes that regrowth or rebuilding is possible.Much of the power of the mural stems from the ethos of its creator, Pablo Picasso. As one of the founders of cubism and a well known artist at the time he had the ability to influence the masses. Also the power draws on that when it was presented the massive mural was the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair. The theme of the World's Fair in Paris was modern technology. Picasso's Guernica along with other works presented at the Republican Spanish Pavilion shocked spectators and exposed them to the horrors of Franco's fascist Nationalist regime. The power of Guernica is still prevalent today. A reproduction of the piece hangs outside the Security Council chamber in the United Nations. And on Colin Powell's February 5, 2003 visit to the UN the reproduction was covered. Most likely because Powell was there arguing for war in Iraq.
Works Cited
Walsh, David. "UN conceals Picasso’s “Guernica” for Powell’s presentation." World Socialist Website. 2003. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/guer-f08.shtml
Bowers, J. "Picasso: Surrealism and the War Years." Baltimore City Paper. 2004. http://www.citypaper.com/arts/story.asp?id=7455
"Treasures of the World." PBS.org. http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html
