Guernica American has been through many wars throughout the years. You can hear and learn about wars through textbooks, libraries, classrooms, and websites; but what about pictures and the art museums. A picture is worth a thousand words, and that is exactly what Pablo Picasso did with his painting Guernica. Guernica is a painting by famous Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It was painted as a reaction to the aerial bombing of Guernica, Spain by German and Italian forces during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The Spanish Republic, government of Spain, appointed Picasso to paint a large mural about the bombing to display at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Guernica show the anguish, horror and pain inflicted on humanity and the innocent. It shows the destructions of war and the awareness for others to remember and never forget. Guernica is a powerful painting, considered a “Masterpiece” by Pablo Picasso and has become an anti-war icon. Guernica became a very powerful art work for many reasons but, most importantly for its usage of colors and of imagery depicting the emotions the characters are showing in the painting. Guernica consists of shades of blacks, grays and whites, representing sadness, and dark emotions for the characters and the event of the bombing. It shows the pains of the innocent, a woman wailing over a dead child in her hands, a horse ripped open, tragic events with images of soldier, flames painted to signify the town on fire and people in a sorrowful atmosphere conveying suffering and disorder. Guernica displays an image that is hard to get out of one’s mind, make one think about what it must have felt like to live back then during that time period, experiencing that event. There is three other art works that can be related to Guernica either by the story it tells, the type of event that is happening or both. The first art work that holds some relations to Guernica is “The Mothers” by Kathe Kollwitz. Kathe Kollwitz is a German expressionist artist whose work is mostly from and about the impacts of war. Kathe Kollwitz lived through both World War I and World War II. She received her inspiration from the destruction and death happening all around her, but what mostly impacted her life and art work was the death of her son on the battlefield during World War I. Kathe Kollwitz art works all display the terrors and hardships many people faced during those tragic years, especially her gallery titled “War” and “Death”. In the “The Mothers”, it shows the horror, sympathy and hardships the mothers and children’s faced during the war. It is a lithograph that displays mothers huddled in a circle trying to protect their children from harm. The art work displays the emotions of the women and children who were left behind while their husbands and father have left to g fight in the war. She wanted to show the people what they were ignoring, the mothers and children. Kathe Kollwitz displays this image and emotions through the way the art work is presented. The women are crowded together and supporting each other, while the children hiding under their mothers in the middle of the circle. The mother’s facial expressions depict mourning, as if for the loss of a relative in the war, and the horror encircling them. It also seems that in the midst of mourning the mothers are creating a pseudo- human shield for their children against an attack. The contrast between the colors black and white with the expanse of white surrounding the people in black, shows the solitude of those who are left behind. With the concept of solitude, one can only think to share their loneliness and grief with each other. Kathe Kollwitz art work “The Mothers” can be similar to Pablo Picasso’s art work “Guernica” in the concept of war and the pain it displays from its characters. An example from “Guernica” would be the women holding a dead child in her hands mourning the loss. In Guernica, it displays the horrors, pain, and emotions that the town’s people had faced with the bombing. The dark colors exhilarating the images meaning to show the emotions trying to get out. One example from “The Mothers” that illustrates the same message would be the mothers huddling around their children to protect them, while having worried and frustrating faces on them. “The Mothers” also used dark colors of black and white to illuminate the presence of evilness. The second art work that holds several relations to Guernica is “The Road of the War Prisoners” by Vasily Vereshchagin. Vasily Vereshchagin is one of the most famous Russian battle painters of his time but, he is mostly popular for his realist paintings. He was best known for his realistic war and combat paintings. This painting was created around 1878 at the end of the Russo-Turkish war. Vereshchagin worked as a war correspondent and traveled to Pleven, in northern Bulgaria to cover the war in 1877. As they were traveling to the Russian camps in Romania they came across the defeated Turkish soldiers, freezing to death. In the painting, he conveys on his memories of the horrors he saw firsthand in the Russo-Turkish War. In the winter of 1877, while working as a war correspondent, he witnessed thousands of Turkish prisoners freezing to death while being marched to Russian war camps. In his painting, he shows the hordes of bodies scattered around frozen to death. In the painting he shows this through colors to depict the scenery of the cold harsh environment of white and light blue. Then he has the bodies lying everywhere, as if they have been brutally murdered and left there. But what make the picture come to life and give that feeling are the birds sitting on the wire waiting like vultures ready to feast. It gives that feeling like nobody cares that this has happened, it is invisible and to be forgotten. Vasily Vereshchagin art work “The Road of the War Prisoners” is related to Pablo Picasso’s art work “Guernica. In Guernica, it displays the pain and anguish of war, while “The Road of the War Prisoners” displays the realism of war and its morals. One example from Guernica would be the soldier lying died with a broken sword in his hand. It Guernica, it shows the pain of the people in the town that is shown on the soldiers face and decapitated fingers. One example from “The Road of the War Prisoners” would be the dead bodies lying scattered on the floor. The bodies simplify the bodies that lay in the fallen town of Guernica, Basque Country village; the innocent dying from war that they did not want to be part of. The final art work that holds some relations to Guernica is a “The Consequences” by Francisco Goya. Francisco Goya was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. Francisco Goya uses imaginative element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, in which provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, like Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon. “The Consequences” is a plate from Goya’s Disasters of War art collection. In the 1810s, Goya created a set of aquatint prints titled The Disasters of War. He never wanted this collection to be shared with the world, but when it was discovered and shared, the whole world looked at it in awe, shock, and disturbing. The Disasters of War series came from the Goya’s experience from war. On May 2, 1808, residents of Madrid rebelled against the French military, which led to the Peninsular War. In response to this conflict, throughout the 1810s Goya printed Los Desastres de la Guerra ('The Disasters of War'), a sequence of 82 prints depicting the effects of war and starvation. In the art work “The Consequences” it is displaying multiple bat/ vulture creatures feasting on the deceased that is left in the wreckage or battlefield. The multiple creatures are feasting on one deceased human being, which is shown through two bleak colors of black and white. The creatures are shaded fully black while the deceased is color white with black outlining. The story that you can feel here is the fact that this one human being is being picked at by these numerous creatures with no one else in the picture, giving you the sense of loneliness and that everyone has to deal with this tragedy of war by themselves. The war is sweeping through killing everyone in front of it leaving nothing behind but horror and the question “why”. All that’s left is the dead and the creatures there to clean everything up so it’s like nothing had happened. What you can also sense is that this innocent person was attack by numerous foes’ and had no help in fighting them and or protect them from the attack. Francisco Goya art work “The Consequences” is related to Pablo Picasso’s art work “Guernica”. Both of their art works are related through the thoughts of the attacks that the people have faced in the paintings. In Guernica, the people had to face the bombings and troops gun fire from both the Germans and French. They were totally obliterated and had no chance of survival, the same thing for “The Consequences” as well, the lonely victim being attacked by multiple enemies and not having a chance to fight back for another chance. Another similarity would be the usage of the colors as well. The black symbolizes evilness and death, while white symbolizes the loneliness, blank emotions. In the end, you can learn a lot about history and the way other people think not only through reading, but also through art as well. What Picasso did with the events of Guernica, he wrote a story that had emotion to it without even writing a word but with brush strokes instead. It told you the events of Guernica and how it was horrible and how war can change lives and people’s views. Even though Guernica was created about a certain event with different styles of art work, there are some other art works that can be related to it as well. Some art work that can relate to Guernica would “The Mothers” by Kathe Kollwitz, “The Road of the War Prisoners” by Vasily Vereshchagin and “The Consequences” by Francisco Goya. These art works hold some familiar meaning to Guernica, either by the way they are painted, the colors used, and or the story that is represented in the art.
Appendix
“The Mother” by Kathe Kollwitz
“The Road of the War Soldiers” by Vasily Vereshchagin (Alternative)
“The Consequences” by Francisco Goya
Guernica
Guernica
Neil Lallkissoon
Humanities 1
Mr. DeCelestino
Spring 2013
CVSR
April 17th, 2013
