Revised: Illuminated Suffering: Picasso's Guernica

"How can I depict war with canvas and paint?" Artists across time have answered this question in different ways. Velazquez with paintings that gloried peaceful surrender, Goya with work that focused on the fear and injustice of unnecessary deaths that came from war. Then there is Picasso and Guernica. The circumstances surrounding the birth of this masterpiece were as chaotic and grotesque as the painting itself. In exploring the symbolism embedded in the painting, and the time it was created, its purpose becomes clear: a potent reminder of the madness and suffering of war.

Picasso painting Guernica, 1937

Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 21st Century, the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s ability to illicit powerful reactions from viewers is especially prominent in Guernica. The massive painting is so intense that some viewers stand before it and burst into tears. Why does Guernica, composed of only canvas and paint, trigger such an emotional reaction, even seventy six years after it was created? For many people, the painting’s emotional impact lies in the subjects Picasso chose and the positions and expressions he gave them. Even without knowing the precise symbolism, viewers know that the space the painting portrays is one of darkness and suffering, seemingly illuminated by little else than a sliver of hope.

On Monday, April 27, 1937, mankind’s first aerial bombing of an undefended civilian population occurred in the small village of Guernica. In the throws of the Spanish Civil War, Guernica had become a center of resistance against the fascist leaders who had overthrown the democratic republic, making it a target for German military forces, who participated actively in the war. For more than two hours, bombs poured down mercilessly into the defenseless town like sea birds diving for their kill. Uncontrollable fires spread throughout the village, the air thick with smoke and pain. 

By the time the bombardment receded, one thousand people were dead, hundreds more left injured. Guernica was not a center of military power, not even a center of rebellion. The primary purpose of the attack was to intimidate the spanish population. On that day, peaceful civilians were slaughtered, a town destroyed -- there is no excuse that could validate that.

A street in Guernica after the bombardment

Picasso read many accounts of the tragic attack in newspapers (the French publication L’Humanité and others like it), by reporters like George Steer and Noel Monks, an Australian journalist whose coverage of the bombing appeared in the publication, Paris-Soir on April 28, 1937. Monks, who happened to be near Guernica at the time of the bombing, recalls the aftermath in his memoir:  “Some of the soldiers were sobbing like children. The flames and smoke and grit, and the smell of burning human flesh was nauseating. Houses were collapsing into the inferno. [The refugees] were wailing and weeping and rocking to and fro. They [all] had the same story to tell, airplanes, bullets, bombs, fire”.

Outraged and inspired, he developed initial sketches of Guernica, deciding how to portray the consequences of this tragic historical event, and how to transpose the turmoil his people experienced to a two dimensional canvas. Picasso felt an obligation to express the sadness of the catastrophic bombing, and to use his art as a tool of remembrance and warning for future generations. Guernica became just that: a powerful memorial, a cemented reminder of the travesty of destroyed life. Paul Preston, a British historian and Hispanist, asserts that “[with the] aid of Picasso's searing painting, it is Guernica that is now remembered as the place where the new and horrific modern warfare came of age...[without] Picasso, Guernica would have soon been forgotten as a regrettable but unavoidable act of war."

Guernica is composed almost entirely of black and white, set in a dark space crowded with people and animals, suggesting a basement, or an underground shelter. Picasso used blacks, whites, and greys to set a solemn mood, and express suffering. The dim space is lit up with starkly contrasting figures rendered in shades of white and grey, who fill the painting with their outstretched limbs. The shape and position of the figures indicates protest and pain. Picasso used pale, contorted figures throughout Guernica, their abstracted faces portrayed in open expressions of agony. These figures represent the suffering of hundreds after the bombing, expressing the pain of many through the depiction of only a few human forms. The horrors of the catastrophe that occurred at Guernica could not be fully expressed with realism, but demanded the rawness Picasso’s cubism offered.

Picasso's Guernica 

Miles away from the war raging in his homeland, Picasso relied on the photographs and articles dedicated to the bombing of Guernica to inspire his work. Combining the information he gathered from these reports, and important symbols of Spanish culture, such as the bull and the horse, Picasso was able to symbolically express not only his own sorrow, but also that of his people. Picasso once declared of his symbolism, “It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words." Although he wanted his viewers to find their own symbolism in his work, there are a few prominent examples of symbolism in Guernica that are accepted as defining characteristics of the piece.

The light-bearer in Guernica

Picasso's Minotauromachy with light-bearer (left)

The first of these symbols is the woman with her arm outstretched, bearing a torch of light in the dark space. This depiction of the young light-bearer can be linked to Picasso’s earlier work, particularly Minotauromachy, one of Guernica’s precursors. In it, a young girl holds out a lantern to give pause to a minotaur who has just killed a female matador. This theme is reflected in Guernica’s light-bearing young woman, holding out a lamp to reveal the horror of the bombing of Guernica to the world. Picasso may have brought back this imagery to illustrate how the honesty of youth can illuminate the darkest times of war.

Also illuminating the dark in Guernica is an image of a lightbulb hanging from the center of the painting, outlined in a spiky oval. This sun-like eye, with a lightbulb as a pupil, represents the Eye Of God, a symbol commonly seen in many Spanish churches. Overlooking the horrors beneath it, Picasso uses the light bulb to represent the presence of the people’s belief in god. More than that, it simultaneously represents the sun, an ever-present illuminator that will not stop, no matter what humanity does.

Picasso also weaves symbolism into the representational materials he utilizes in Guernica. His use of dashed black lines on white (representing newspaper) in the painting under the image of a horse (a symbol of the Spanish people), implies that the event of the bombing has drained the color out of the small town, leaving it as lifeless as black and white print. Although the painting depicts a morbid and despair-ridden scene, Picasso did not leave the canvas without a representation of hope. He painted a broken sword at the bottom of the painting, and growing from it a small flower, barely detectable unless you look for it. This tiny tulip represents the possibility of recovery from war and tragedy, and the idea that beauty and light are still exist somewhere in the midst of immense horror.

Picasso puts the viewer on the same level as the figures in Guernica, he depicts suffering in a close setting, paints the pain of war in faces and limbs, not in burning buildings seen from overhead. Guernica allows us experience the horrors of war firsthand, through only paint and canvas. Picasso’s only weapon was his painting. Even years after he created it, Guernica remains a weapon against violence. A visual reminder of what happens when people are destroyed carelessly. There is a resonance in Picasso’s greatest masterpiece, the light-bearer and symbolic sun illuminate his painting, while the painting illuminates the massacre that he refuses to forget. Guernica reminds us that the only things we have with which to confront terror are light and the naked truth. It comes as no surprise that unsuspecting visitors stand in front of it, understand, and burst into tears.