“Guernica” by Pablo Picasso

 In the few years of taking Art History courses I’ve never truly studied Pablo Picasso.  He was just another artist I knew a little about.  The past few days I’ve been reading A Short Guide to Writing about Art by Sylvan Barnet and I came across and interesting fact about Picasso.  John Richardson, the author of A Life of Picasso, wrote how Picasso’s style changed as he married and dated different women, even as he changed friends.  To Richardson it is apparent that Apollinaire affected Picasso’s Cubism, Cocteau affected his Neoclassicism, and Breton affected his Surrealism. Like I said I’d never really studied Picasso or his work but to read this motivated me to look more into his life.  Picasso is quoted to say “My work is like a diary.  To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors my life.”  I’m here now to read Picasso’s “diary” and to understand him a little bit more.  

The only artwork by Picasso I was really introduced to by and art teacher was his Guernica.  I first saw this artwork in my Art Fundamentals course with Professor Thompson.  We were studying space on paper and how to fill space equally and interestingly.  How to have something busy on paper but yet not overwhelming.  She showed us Picasso’s Guernica as “the perfect example.” 

Picasso painted the Guernica in 1937 for the World Fair.  It was a response piece to the bombing of a Basque town in Guernica, Spain. When Picasso was asked to paint the piece he was unsure of how to convey the message through a painting.  Once the news hit Paris in May the black and white images of the townspeople running for their lives and burning in the streets hit the newspapers.  Picasso found his inspiration.  For the next three months he worked on sketches for the painting, noting that he did not want “to represent the horror of Guernica in realist or romantic terms.”  Three months later the masterwork was sent to Spain to be put on display and viewed as a reminder of the event.  

As I was doing research I found a quote by Picasso that I felt goes along well with the work he put into this painting:  “A painting is not thought out and settled in advance, while it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.”

One of the most beautiful things of art, it’s what you make of it.

Photo and Information gather from: http://www.artquotes.net/masters/picasso/pablo_guernica1937.htm, http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html, and “A Short Guide to Writing About Art” 4th Edition by Sylvan Barnet