Examine Implicit Message Painting Guernica Pablo Picasso

Guernica

From 1936 to 1939 a civil war was fought in Spain between the Republican government and a group of rebels under the command of General Francisco Franco: the Nationalists. During the war many outside groups allied themselves with the two sides with many communists and democrats siding with the Republican forces and a cadre of fascists from Germany and Italy who fought with the Nationalists. In 1937 Nationalist air forces, primarily Germans and Italians, undertook the bombing of the city of Guernica; the first major aerial bombing of a city in history. The destruction and deaths caused by the attack became the inspiration for one of the century's most famous artists, Pablo Picasso, who used the bombing of Guernica as the subject of an anti-war painting. Picasso's work of art, called Guernica, has become a symbol of the destruction and pain caused by war and must be interpreted through the prism of war and suffering.

The painting itself is done in black and white and contains a number of symbolic figures which represent the horrors of war. The main figure, which occupies the central spot in the painting, is a horse which seems to have a spear running through its body. The horse, which appears to be in anguish and possibly dying, is a symbol of the pain and suffering caused by war. The horse, along with several other figures, has a dagger for a tongue and symbolizes the terrible pain and suffering inflicted upon the common people.

To the far left in the painting is another major figure, a quiet and dispassionate bull. While Picasso used the symbolism of the bull in many different ways, it seems that the bull in this painting represents the uncaring General Franco and his "bullish" attack and seizure of power. Bulls are a symbol of unadulterated power and Franco was the power of his day. Located directly underneath the bull is an image of a screaming woman holding a dead child. While there can be many interpretations, the most likely is that this figure represents what it appears to represent, the suffering of a mother at the death of her child. This figure is symbolic of all the innocent people killed and injured by the attacks inflicted upon them by the Nationalist forces in their attempt to size power. The woman seems to be screaming directly at the bull, a symbol of Franco and the Nationalists, as though they are responsible foe the death of her child.

Directly below the impaled horse is the figure of what appears to be a head with two arms. It is said that Picasso originally used his own image as the model for this head, but later changed it to represent the Republican forces fighting against Franco and the Nationalists. The head seems to be connected to two arms in a stretched out position, almost reminiscent of Christ on the cross, and are symbolic of the death and destruction heaped upon the common people. But in one arm is gripped a broken sword representing the common people, representing the Republican forces, fighting back against the tyranny of the Nationalists. The fact that the sword is broken can be interpreted as the Republican forces being outmatched, and thus outfought, by the Nationalists. The attack on the city of Guernica can be an example of how overwhelming the attacks of the Nationalists actually were and represented by a hand gripping a broken sword.

The two most prominent figures in the painting are the bull and the horse, and these two figures seem to represent the two sides in the Spanish Civil War: the nationalists represented by the bull and the Republican forces represented by the horse. Both images play an important role in Spanish culture and their representations in the painting are used to transmit the forces at work during the war. The bull represents fascism and the uncaring and dispassionate view toward the common people associated with it, while the horse, in all its pain and suffering, represents the death and destruction of the common people at the hands of the uncaring bull.