«Guernica» and the imaginary of Picasso

The origin of an universal icon

Abstract

In January 1937 Picasso accepted a commission from the Spanish Republic to paint a large mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris; on 4 June the mural, entitled Guernica, was to be exhibited in the Pavilion. In this year, Picasso, the founder and renovator of modern art, was the only artist who remained relevant in the face of the successive avant-garde movements. At this time he enjoyed the greatest international recognition, to the point of being considered a living ‘myth’. The artist, who was emotionally reconnected with his country in the 1930s, had already become involved with the Republic when he accepted his appointment as director of the Prado Museum. But the magnitude of the new commission entailed a different kind of commitment. It was a commitment to the propagandistic expectations of the Spanish Republic, but it was also a commitment to his own demands as the most important artist of the day and as a champion of modern art. During the process of creating the mural, the town of Guernica was bombed by the Italian-German air force, allied with the rebel side. Guernica was the title with which Picasso denounced the massacre perpetrated against the Basque population. Beyond the title, there are hardly any elements in the mural that refer to this event. The ideograms present in the final state of Guernica, and in its preparatory states, already existed in Picasso's production. These ideograms, like the paradigmatic bull-horse formula, belong to his most intimate imaginary. Picasso was not capable of resolving Guernica until he efficiently brought together a set of elements rescued from the depths of his language. He recovered these ideograms from his own imaginary and concentrated them in Guernica. The consequence is the complex condensation of symbols that makes this paint a polysemic and hermetic work in equal parts.