Art, literature & culture

Guernica

1937

Guernica is a huge black, white and gray oil painting by Pablo Picasso, completed in 1937 for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the International Exposition in Paris. It was prompted by the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in April 1937 by German and Italian aircraft supporting Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. Using fragmented, distorted forms, the canvas shows screaming figures, a wounded horse, a bull and a woman holding a dead child, without any explicit reference to the planes or the town. It toured Europe and the United States and was kept at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at Picasso's wish until the end of the dictatorship. It has been in Madrid since 1981 and is now displayed in the Museo Reina Sofía, as a lasting symbol of the horror of war.

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