Guernica is Pablo Picasso's painting of the air raid on the Basque town of Guernica, which took place on April 26, 1937, when German and Italian aircraft attacked it for General Franco's side in the Spanish Civil War. It means anger at the killing of civilians from the air, painted in black, white and gray. Picasso said plainly what the picture was for, and much less about the animals in it.
The Spanish Republic, the elected government then fighting Franco's rebellion, had asked Picasso, who lived in Paris, for a mural for its pavilion at the city's 1937 World's Fair. The canvas he delivered is about 3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide. It shows a horse in agony, a bull, a mother holding her dead child and a soldier lying in pieces on the ground.
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The most famous painting of an air raid has no aircraft in it. No bomb falls anywhere on the canvas, and only the title ties it to a town. Its figures carry no labels.
Only the bombing itself is beyond dispute, and The Times of London reported it two days later. Almost everything else attached to the painting, from the bull to the lamp, is interpretation, and the interpretations do not agree.
The mural Picasso meant to paint
Picasso had planned a different picture. He spent the early months of the year on another subject, an allegory of painting with a painter and his model. The commission had come at the start of the year through Josep Renau, the Republic's director of fine arts, who asked for a large work built into the architecture of the Spanish pavilion.
Picasso was already attacking Franco in another medium. On January 8, 1937, he began two etching sheets called The Dream and Lie of Franco, each divided into nine small scenes. They were propaganda against Franco's regime, printed as postcards and sold to raise money for the Republican government.
The painter and his model lasted until the end of April. Then news of the raid came from the Basque Country, and Franco's side began denying it the day after the bombs fell.
What You'll Discover
What happened in Guernica on market day.
Which figures have no agreed meaning.
Why Spain waited until 1981 to see it.
What Picasso said the painting was for.