3/21/2020 Guernica Meaning: Analysis & Interpretation of Painting by Pablo Picasso

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Guernica Meaning: Analysis &

Interpretation of Painting by Pablo
Picasso
BY K SHABI PUBLISHED 31 JULY 2013

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Guernica (1937) by artist Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous paintings of all
time. Like so many famous works of art, the meaning of Picasso's Guernica is not
immediately clear and left wide open to analysis and interpretation. What is the
meaning of Guernica, the mural by Pablo Picasso? A careful analysis and intepretation Meaning of The Scream (1893) Painting
of the painting reveals the importance of Spain, war, and most of all bullfighting in by Edvard Munch: Art Analysis
What is the meaning of The Scream 1893
Picasso's Guernica. painting by Edvard Munch? The Scream
meaning, art analysis and interpretation.

Click to view Picasso's Guernica painting in high resolution »

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3/21/2020 Guernica Meaning: Analysis & Interpretation of Painting by Pablo Picasso

Guernica and Spain: Nationalist Art?

Picasso's homeland of Spain is central to the meaning of Guernica, a mural the artist
was commissioned to paint for the 1937 World Fair in Paris. Although Picasso American Gothic Meaning: Grant Wood
Painting Interpretation & Analysis
expatriated to Paris and never did return to Spain during his life, the artist's connection
What is the meaning of the painting American
to his homeland of Spain is evident in Guernica, named after a small country town in Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood? Interpretation
and analysis of this famous example of 20th
north Spain that was the target of a terror bombing exercise by the German Luftwaffe century American regional art.

during the Spanish Civil War.

"My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous
struggle against reaction and the death of art. In the picture I am painting
— which I shall call Guernica — I am expressing my horror of the
Edward Hopper Nighthawks Diner
military caste which is now plundering Spain into an ocean of misery and Painting Meaning & Film Noir Analysis
death." What is the meaning of artist Edward Hopper's
diner painting Nighthawks? The scene seems
PABLO PICASSO to come straight out of classic Hollywood lm
noir.

Analysis of Picasso's Guernica: An Anti War Painting

As Picasso's quote suggests, Guernica is primarily a war painting, offering a visual
account of the devastating and chaotic impact of war on both men and women, in this
case specifically on civilian life and communities. Picasso completed the painting of
Guernica in 1937, a time of widespread political unrest not just in Spain, but
worldwide. World War II would begin just a couple years later and would further
decimate the European continent as a whole. In Guernica, we see several victims of
the bombing--some still living, some already dead. A figure sprawled supine in the
foreground of the painting appears to be a corpse and is framed on both sides by Time and Motion in Art: Futurist
Paintings of Movement
living victims with their heads thrown back, wailing in agony. The figure to the left is a The futurist movement in particular was
dedicated to capturing both time and motion
mother clutching a baby who appears to have died during the bombing. in art, creating paintings of movement.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica Painting Influences & Cubism

The chaos caused by Europe's political instability is evident in Guernica's composition,
with humans and animals jumbled together into a background of broken hard-edged
geometric shapes, reminiscent of Cubism. The newspaper print background texture of
the horse may also be a throwback to Picasso's early "Journal" Cubist artwork. While
art critics enjoy analyzing the use of color in Picasso's "rose" or "blue" periods, in the
mostly monochromatic painting Guernica the predominant "color" is mostly black,
reminiscent perhaps of death itself. Picasso's Guernica is most likely influenced by
another Spanish artist, Francisco de Goya, who often painted not only war paintings,

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3/21/2020 Guernica Meaning: Analysis & Interpretation of Painting by Pablo Picasso

but also bullfighting art. How does bullfighting influence the meaning of Picasso's
Guernica?

Tauromachia: Guernica & Traditional Spanish Bullfighting Symbolism

Humans and animals are on an equal footing in Picasso's Guernica, with the artist
perhaps illustrating not only the simultaneous brutalization and dehumanization of
humanity during wartime, but also the base, animalistic response that all living things,
animals and humans, share in the face of fear and death. But the two animals in Siouxsie & The Banshees Metal
Postcard, John Heartfield Photomontage
Guernica, the bull and the horse, may have more meaning than just that. Art
What does Siouxsie and the Banshees' post
punk music have to do with anti Nazi Berlin
Dada art? Everything!

Is the meaning of Picasso's Guernica somehow related to bullfighting? Guernica can

be classified as a "war painting," but the painting also features many symbols--
Meaning & Analysis: Starry Night Over
including a bull, horse, and a man with a sword--that would fit well into traditional the Rhone by Vincent Van Gogh
What does Starry Night Over the Rhone mean?
bullfighting art, much like Picasso's own later art and sketches like Tauromaquia The meaning of Starry Night is often debated
(1957). The bull is the unofficial national symbol of Spain, and bullfighting is a and analyzed, but less attention is given to the
meaning behind Starry Night Over the Rhone,
traditional pastime or spectacle sport in Spain, with this bullfighting symbolism one of Van Gogh’s rst “starry nightâ€
paintings.
connecting Guernica with a specifically nationalistic meaning.

But Picasso's Guernica does not depict the traditional Spanish bullfight you might
expect to see in a "nationalistic" painting. Rather than depicting a victorious matador
bowing to the crowds before a slaughtered bull, in Guernica the bull remains stoically
standing to the left side of the painting while the matador lays dead in the foreground,
the sword or spear he might have used to slaughter the bull broken off in his hand.
Like the fallen matador, his horse is also dying and anguished. Only the bull remains
peaceful in Guernica, with the other figures and the entire composition of the painting
turned toward the bull, an unlikely peaceful "center" for the war painting on the left Starry Night: Meaning of the Vincent Van
Gogh Landscape Painting
side of the canvas.
Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night is one of the
most famous pieces of art today. But what is
the true meaning of Van Gogh's masterpiece?

"If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very

true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and
conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I
make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are."
PABLO PICASSO

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3/21/2020 Guernica Meaning: Analysis & Interpretation of Painting by Pablo Picasso

Interpretation & Meaning of Guernica (1937) & Kristen Stewart's Tattoo

Even though Picasso did not like to discuss the "meaning" of his art, the nationalistic
symbolism of Guernica is difficult to deny. As the unofficial national symbol of
Picasso's homeland and the most resilient figure in Guernica, the bull most likely is a
symbol of Spain itself, the country still "standing" even after a brutal attack. While the
bull is triumphant in the painting, the overall meaning of Guernica is less optimistic,
with chaos and brutality reigning over civilization, much as it did during the real life
Guernica bombing attack. Still, Guernica lives on as one of the most famous war
paintings in history and has even been commemorated in tattoo form by celebrities
like Kristen Stewart.

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Guernica (1937) Meaning; War & Bullfighting Painting by Pablo Picasso

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