Modern Painting: Guernica

Report on a modern painting with people and animals

Guernica

“Guernica” was painted in 1937 by the famous modern painter Pablo Picasso, in Spain.

The artist

Pablo Diego José Fransico de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, most common known as Picasso (25/10/1881), was a Spanish painter, sculptist and a graphic artist. He was the first child of José Ruis Blasco and María Picasso López. His father (José) was also an artist, teacher of arts classes, and a conservatist. He had two sisters, Lola and Conchita. Picasso had a lot of wifes, whom he often used as a model for his paintings. Everytime he fell in love again, his style of painting changed. He has four children: Paulo, Maya, Claude and Paloma. He studied at the academy of Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, and has since then painted many famous painting. He had several different periods of painting like the Pink, the Blue, the Cubist, the Classic, the Surrealistic and the Abstract Period. He died on the 8th of April 1973, at the age of 92, in Mougins in France.

The painting

There is much to be seen on the painting. There is a horse running into a house in panic. On the right of the painting somebody is falling of a burning roof and there is a mother crying about her dead child. Picasso wanted to show the chaos in Guernica during the bombardment. In the front there is a man with a broken sword, the symbol for a dead soldier. The lamp is a symbol for explosions and the bombardment of Guernica. The painting was made during the Latter Period, in which Picasso withdrew himself from publicity. Even though he wasn’t as famous as he’d once been, he still made very nice, and a lot of paintings.

For “Guernica”, Picasso used oil-paint (grey, red, white) to make his most famous painting ever. He used it in a rather abstract way, because human and animal figures can be recognised, but it doesn’t look like the normal shapes at all. There is no clear direction in the painting, because it has to represent the chaos of the bombing of the town of Guernica in Spain in 1936. So everything, horses, people and other things in the painting are running in a chaotic way.

My opinion

Personally, I do not like “Guernica”, but I’m not an arts-liking person at all. I like some of the 17th century Dutch art like Rembrandt, and some Vincent van Gogh, but I do not like most art.

My resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)