Guernica, a sorrow scream of our specie

“This picture has not made for decorating rooms. It’s an offensive and defensive war instrument against the enemy”

Pablo Picasso, about ‘Guernica’.

I don’t have chosen a photo. I think Photography is a very cool and interesting art and activity, but I’m not identified with it. Artistic paintings are better making me feel intense emotions. So, I would talk to you about one of the greatest pictures of 20^th Century and all over Art History.

‘Guernica’ is the name of the most famous painting of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. He painted it in 1937, referring to the bombing of a Spanish town called Guernica, in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. It is an oil painting and its dimensions are 3,50 x 7,80 m, using only black and white paint, working with grey scales. The work hasn’t direct allusions to the town and to Spanish Civil War; so, it’s a symbolic painting, full of allegories -some of these were explained by Picasso- and with many interpretations about the whole work.

The most common ideas about Guernica’s interpretation converge in a blue and dark response to the war like an option for societies and the cruel way it manifest for the common people. I really admire this painting, because it transfers to me all the anguish and death feeling of the last century (and current). When I see it or I remember it, I think art is more powerful than weapons and it could be, just like Picasso said, a better and stronger instrument for face up to an evil enemy: The hunger for power.

I wonder you like this post. Before going out, I would share to you a too interesting anecdote about Guernica. In 1940, in Paris, during the Nazi occupation, a Nazi officer interrogated Picasso about a photo of Guernica: “Did you made it?” Picasso answered: “No, you did” (In plural).