Picasso's Guernica example essay topic

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881. He was the son of Maria Picasso Lopez and Jose Ruiz B lasco, an artist and teacher at San T elmo school of arts and industrial design. By the age of fifteen, Pablo was already technically skilled in drawing and painting, under the teachings of his father. Picasso's highly original style incessantly evolved throughout his long career, escalating the meaning of what art could be.

It was market day in Guernica, when the church bells of Santa Maria echoed the city that afternoon in 1937. For over three hours, twenty-five or more of Germany's best-equipped bombers, led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, dumped one hundred thousand pounds of high-explosive and combustible bombs on the village, slowly and steadily pounding it to rubble. Approximately 1,700 of Guernica's 5,000 residents were killed or wounded. The fires that engulfed the city burned for three days Eyewitness reports fill the front pages of Paris papers. The 17th-century building at No. 7, rue des Grands-Augustine in Paris where Picasso lived and worked for many years. Panak 2 Picasso was startled by the stark black and white photographs.

Sickened and infuriated, Picasso rushed through the crowded streets to his studio, where he quickly sketched the first images for the mural he will eventually call Guernica. Picasso was to paint a mural for the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937 World's Fair. He did not have inspiration at the time, but he had found it with this event. Guernica is also full of hidden images and themes. As a result, almost every line and shape in it is meaningful, either in the context of what it represents or what it is concealing. There is a intense, dramatic clashing of light and dark tones and the overhead light sources.

The bull stands motionless observing the scene before them. The fallen warrior, in the crucifixion pose, with severed arms, show the agony and pain they felt. In the center, there is a human skull concealed within the body and legs of the wounded horse. The horse has been stabbed by a spear, a symbol representing Picasso-the first four letters of his name mean spear in Spanish. Despite the enormous interest the painting generated in his lifetime, Picasso adamantly refused to explain Guernica's imagery, but if you look at the painting, its not hard to see what he's trying to say. After the Fair, Guernica toured Europe and Northern America to raise consciousness about the threat of fascism.

From the beginning of World War II until 1981, Guernica was housed in its temporary home at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, though it makes frequent trips abroad to such places as Munich, Cologne, Stockholm, and even Sao Palo in Brazil. The one place it does not go is Spain. Although Picasso had always intended for the mural to be owned by the Spanish people, he refuses to allow it to travel to Spain until the country enjoys "public liberties and democratic Panak 3 institutions". People wanted to destroy it; it was so controversial the time. In 1973, Pablo Picasso, the most influential artist of the twentieth century, dies at the age of ninety-two. And when Franco dies in 1975, Spain moves closer to its dream of democracy, After six decades of travel, Guernica now resides at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sof " ia in Madrid, and officials say it is too fragile ever to travel again.

Guernica is acclaimed as an artistic masterpiece, taking its rightful place among the great Spanish treasures of El Greco, Goya and Velazquez. "A lot of people recognize the painting", says art historian Patricia Failing. "They may not even know that it's a Picasso, but they recognize the image. It's a kind of icon". The citizens of the town of Guernica have installed a ceramic replica of the painting on a wall near the Basque assembly hall. A group of schoolgirls in Guernica, who reported that their town was "famous for football, beautiful boys, the sacred oak, and oh, yes, a painting by Picasso from very long ago".

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