“We all know Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth”
-Pablo Picasso
“We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if they glow in the dark, but we will find out.”
-Ted Cruz on using carpet bombing today
Monday, April 26, 1937 was Market Day in Guernica, Spain. It was a beautiful Spring day with gorgeous clear skies. As is typical for Market Day, some 10,000 people from the country crowded into the city to shop for the fresh produce and supplies that farmers had brought in from the near by fields.
Guernica is in Basque country in Northern Spain. This is a sea faring region that straddles the border with France. The close relationship with France and the sea created a fierce people proud of their unique cultural identity. They wanted to protect it from Franco’s ambitions to absorb them into greater Spain. They had a unique language and the area was rich in iron deposits. Basque steel was the backbone of the fragile Spanish economy for decades.
A last bit of context to explain. Spain was embroiled in a terrible Civil War. The Nationalists, led by Franco, were fighting the Republicans. Basques supported the Republican cause. The Republicans had reached out to Stalin for support so Franco reached out to the other powers, notably Nazi Germany and Italy for support. These European powers used the Spanish conflict to fight a proxy war much like what is happening in Syria today. Many of the techniques later used in World War II were tested here and , like Syria, it was the civilians that paid the price. Guernica was a mostly peaceful town and had never taken part in the Civil war. Most historians feel it did not have any strategic value as a target.
So on that fateful Monday afternoon, 29 German and Italian bombers appeared over Guernica. The attack started with a lone bomber attacking bridges to prevent pathways of escape. Then, over the next three hours the bombing continued. It was the first ‘Carpet bombing', a technique designed to obliterate everything below indiscriminately.
They dumped high explosive and incindery bombs on the defenseless city below.
Below was the main aircraft used. The Ju52 was a converted passenger airliner. It had no bomb bay or targeting mechanism. Soldiers just opened the passenger door and threw the bombs out by hand.
Guernica had no targets for the military. The city and the people below were the target. The object was to kill and maim as many as possible.
This was the result -
It was the first arial carpet bombing of civilians and was called a war crime. Hundreds of people died.
As World War II progressed, the carpet bombing method pioneered here on this day would be used throughout the conflict leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Pablo Picasso was living in Paris at the time. He read about the attack and began working on what is arguably his most famous painting simply titled Guernica.
One author writes, “Guernica was a commissioned painting. After the bombing of Guernica, Picasso was made aware of what had gone on in his country of origin. At the time, he was working on a mural for the Paris Exhibition to be held in the summer of 1937, commissioned by the Spanish Republican government. He deserted his original idea and on 1 May 1937, began on Guernica. This captivated his imagination unlike his previous idea, on which he had been working somewhat dispassionately, for a couple of months. It is interesting to note, however, that at its unveiling at the Paris Exhibition that summer, it garnered little attention. It would later attain its power as such a potent symbol of the destruction of war on innocent lives.”
After the Mona Lisa, it is considered the most famous painting in the world and we visited the work today.
He painted the work in a new style he was pioneering - Cubism. The idea is to shatter a subject into a million pieces then reassemble the shards or cubes into a canvas. It was a way of showing a 3 dimensional object on a 2 dimensional canvas.
This is the finished work
** - They do not allow you to take pictures of the work in the room when we were there. So, these images are from the internet - I apologize for the lack of sharpness for some of the pics**
An art historian writes, “Not only did the artist use lack of color to express the starkness of the aftermath of the bombing, he also specially ordered house paint that had a minimum amount of gloss. The matte finish, in addition to the shades of grey, white and blue-black, set an outspoken yet unadorned tone for the artwork.”
Breaking the painting down - (I wish the images were sharper, but I was limited by the Museum's rules)
A woman howls up at the night sky
A horse screams-
A man falls from the horse and dies
A wounded woman drags herself through the streets but her leg is too thick dragging her down. It is like trying to run from something in a nightmare.
A bull, the symbol of Spain, ponders it all watching over. The bull, normally a symbol of strength in impotent and frightened and the faint dove can do nothing but cry.
A mother and her dead baby - a modern Pieta
A woman sticks her head out the window to see what is going on
And the whole thing is lit by a bare light.
Picasso chose these images to emphasize the universal suffering of war. He said “The horse with the spear in his back symbolizes humanity succumbing to brute force”
The painting caused a sensation and traveled the world trying to raise funds for the Republican cause. The Republicans were defeated by Franco and he ruled for 36 years until his death in the 1970’s. Picasso swore the painting would remain in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until Spain finally had a democracy.
While Picasso was living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, one German officer allegedly asked him, upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment, "Did you do that?" Picasso responded, "No, you did."
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