A Critical Analysis Of Pablo Picasso's Guernica

It is a paradox of sorts to think that going to war would make someone a coward. What is more valiant than flocking to the battle lines and making the ultimate sacrifice for the innocent civilians back home? But Pablo Picasso, an abstract artist of the 20th century, argues that these soldiers—these martyrs—die for nothing when organized combat turns to genocide and massacre. On April 27, 1934, as a brutal civil war was ravaging Picasso’s native country of Spain, Hitler chose the Basque village of Guernica as a target for Nazi bombing practice. Over sixteen hundred townspeople were killed or wounded in the process. After hearing of these attacks, an enraged Picasso began sketching what would eventually become Guernica, an eleven by twenty five

The coloring is reminiscent of Picasso’s encounter with the daunting reports and photos plastered across newspapers the day after Guernica was bombed (Arbeiter). To further this effect, he includes a textured pattern over the horse and throughout certain parts of the painting to resemble newsprint. Both of these features enhance the sense of objective reporting that the painting attempts to create because Picasso is considering government leaders who boast the merits of war, and squelching their protests with the unbiased nature of firsthand accounts. Guernica digs into the truth behind the pictures. Picasso does not want civilians to passively look at the images in the papers, but to visualize the horrific bombing from the inside. Colors would have distracted potential critics from his message; black and white forces them to think. It is almost as if he’s taking on this style as a way of daring someone to question him. Guernica is journalistic in the sense that Picasso reports the facts about the futile nature of war. He takes the contents of traditional photography and peels back a layer to reveal distorted images that convey combat’s true