December 04, 2012
Guernica (panel)
1937; 351x782 cm
Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid
On the afternoon of April 26, 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, the bombers of the Condor Air Legion destroyed the city of Guernica, the historical capital of the Basques in northern Spain.
The first terrorist bombing of the civilian population, which affected thousands of innocent people, immediately caused indignation throughout the world. The Spaniard Picasso took this inhuman action as a personal tragedy and created one of his most emotional works - " Guernica».
The ruthless deformations of human bodies, which so embarrassed many in other works Picasso, turn out to be not only appropriate here - they made it possible to convincingly, materially, almost physically feel the horror of war, the nightmarish absurdity of the very idea of murder.
The bull's head in the upper left corner of the picture - no doubt belongs to the Minotaur, who embodies evil and destruction. Not occupying a central place in the composition of the work, he still claims to dominate: his appearance is the only one that does not express suffering, yet the weeping faces are turned to him as if with a silent prayer.
Looking further into the picture, we will notice that in the center of the composition, which is built like a frieze of cubist-surrealistic elements, a running woman, a wounded horse and a dead warrior are depicted. In the hand of the defeated is a broken sword, a sign of defeat, next to it are flowers that grow by themselves on the graves of martyrs, birds fly into the sky - winged souls.
Each character in the picture literally falls into the terrible world surrounding him from all sides. With "wild rampage", the expression of people and animals in " Guernica» The calmly glowing lampshade contrasts strangely with an electric lamp. This light is not like the light of a flame in which a woman rushes about, burning, with her hands raised to the sky.
It also does not look like tongues of fire, which we see in the lamp, which is held in the outstretched hand by another heroine of the panel. The light coming from the electric lantern is calm, even - it is the light of hope.
In one of his comments on "Guernica" Picasso noted that "the light in the picture is the world to which every living creature will strive." It turns out that in "Guernica" the master paints not only a pessimistic picture of life, in this work one can find both faith in the best, and hope for the victory of Cosmos over Chaos...
Any story about Guernica» begins with a story about the visit of a German officer to the studio Pablo Picasso in the occupied paris. I won't make exceptions.
The Gestapo did not come to arrest the artist, but for a study visit - "for a visit." Seeing on the table postcards with a reproduction of "Guernica", to put it mildly, not the most pleasant picture for the fascist regime, the officer asked Picasso: "Did you do this?" The artist replied: "No, you did it." Perhaps this is just a beautiful story, especially since Picasso was not arrested and sent to the dungeons after that, but it conveys the meaning of Guernica very well. This is a work that captures a fact in an artistic form. Even if someone destroyed all the documents, all the memories of this air raid, all the memory, then the picture would remain, and everyone who saw it would ask: “What is this? What is it about?”, and would look for answers, and find them.
In terms of tourism, Guernica is very rich. Both she and her whole history will not give you pleasant impressions, but this kind of “pessimistic” or “gloomy” tourism also has a right to exist, and people still go to see places of grief and sorrow - for various reasons. "Guernica" began, of course, in the city of the same name, which gave the canvas its name. In 1937, during the civil war in Spain, Guernica controlled by the Republicans. It is known that there was no concentration of troops, large headquarters or formations here. But there were factories here that were used by the Republicans to manufacture munitions. Therefore, the raid was quite expected. But, as is often the case, the targets were adjusted - the main blow of the Condor Legion fell on the local market square. Most of the destruction and casualties were due to fires from the bombing than from explosions. The number of victims, according to various estimates, ranges from several hundred to 2 thousand people.
Of particular importance to the bombing of Guernica was The Times reporter George Steer, who described the air raid and gave rise to several controversial theories related to this event. For example, Steer claimed that on this day the peasants gathered in the city for a market day, although, apparently, trade was canceled due to hostilities. In general, the American was incredibly picky about the facts and looked for evidence for each of his phrases. For example, then Germany's participation in the Spanish War was only a rumor, but the reporter got hold of fragments of bombs with a German eagle, and also found out the aircraft models. But the most cynical discovery made by him that day was the undamaged military factories, which, supposedly, were to be the target of the raid. It is obvious that the Germans bombed the population of the town, and people who fled from the town were shot from onboard machine guns.
Steer's report was the most powerful bomb that went off that day. Picasso, who learned from the newspaper about the air raid, was amazed and outraged. Therefore, he immediately agreed to create a picture for the Spanish pavilion at the World Exhibition.
He wrote "Guernica" for about a month, in the first days he worked feverishly for 10-12 hours. This was his largest work - the canvas was 7.76 meters long and 3.49 meters high. He abandoned color and filled the space with black and white images of suffering, cruelty, grief and madness - this is how he saw what was happening in his homeland.
The picture was not accepted by everyone, even the supporters of the republic. Many believed that Picasso was carried away by political ideas and sacrificed art for the sake of propaganda, albeit for a good cause.
After the exhibition in Paris, the painting went on a tour of Europe, and when the fascists defeated the republicans, and Franco's dictatorship was established in Spain, "Guernica" was taken to NY, where it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in the autumn of 1939, when Germany already invaded Poland. Funds collected for viewing the picture went to the Spanish refugee fund.
From New York, the picture often went on tour USA and Europe, gaining fame as the most famous modern work of art in Spain. Surprisingly, in the late 1960s, Francisco Franco expressed a desire to acquire the painting and exhibit it in Spain, which, of course, was refused by Picasso. He said that he would agree to give the painting to Franco only after he agreed to restore it to Spain republic.
Gradually, the war in Spain was forgotten, and "Guernica" became a symbol of protest against any wars. Its significance and strength were confirmed in 2003 in the UN building. "Guernica" was presented there in the form of a tapestry and hung on the wall of the room through which diplomats passed to meetings of the UN Security Council. There were also speeches to the press. On February 5, journalists noticed that the reproduction was covered with a veil. It turned out that Secretary of State Colin Powell, who spoke about the need for a war in Iraq, spoke against the backdrop of Guernica, which became an ominous illustration of his words. The administration of George W. Bush, feeling powerless in the face of the persuasiveness of the anti-war masterpiece, insisted that UN workers hang Guernica.
Now the canvas is in the National Museum "Reina Sofia Art Center" in Madrid. The Basques, who consider the city of Guernica their cultural center, insist that the canvas go to the Basque Country, to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
In Guernica itself, those events are presented in the form of graffiti copying the work of Picasso, a monument to George Steer and the “Monument of Peace” by sculptor Eduardo Chilida. Another famous work on the events of 1937 was the girl "Guernica" by the French sculptor Rene Iche. The statue was always owned by the sculptor and was not exhibited by him because of the depressing impression it made. However, the original plaster form of the statue is in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, France.
Pablo Picasso
On the Madrid square, bearing the name of Pablo Picasso, there is a monument of pink granite. The inscription on it reads “Residents of Madrid in memory of Pablo Ruiz Picasso - the Spanish genius of world art. May, 1980"
You can know a lot about the "blue" and "pink" periods of Picasso's work, you can treat his works in different ways. But everyone remembers his famous dove, painted by the artist in 1947 and since then has circled the entire planet as a symbol of peace. And everyone knows his equally famous painting "Guernica", which Picasso painted a decade earlier - in 1937.
By this time, the artist left noisy Paris, moved to the town of Tremblay near Versailles and lived there very secluded. He painted large night still lifes with a candle burning near the window, books, flowers and butterflies flying into the fire. They guessed the thirst for peace and a kind of hymn to the stillness of the night. But events in the world have dramatically changed the artist's solitary life.
In 1937, the whole of Europe followed the Spanish Civil War with intense attention. There, on the outskirts of Barcelona and Madrid, in the Iberian mountains and on the Biscay coast, her fate was decided. In the spring of 1937, the rebels went on the offensive, and on April 26, the German squadron "Condor" made a night raid on the small town of Guernica, located near Bilbao - in the Basque Country.
This small town with 5,000 inhabitants was sacred to the Basques - the indigenous population of Spain, it preserved the rarest monuments of its ancient culture. The main attraction of Guernica is the "Guernicaco arbola", the legendary oak (or, as it is also called, the government tree). At its foot, the first liberties were once proclaimed - autonomy granted to the Basques by the Madrid royal court. Under the crown of the oak, the kings swore an oath to the Basque parliament - the first in Spain - to respect and defend the independence of the Basque people. For several centuries, only for this purpose they specially came to Guernica.
But the Francoist regime took away this autonomy. There was no military need for an air raid, the Nazis wanted to inflict a “psychological blow” on the enemy, and a barbaric bombardment was carried out. German and Italian aviation not only acted with the knowledge of Franco, but also at his personal request. And they destroyed Guernica...
This event was the impetus for Pablo Picasso to create a great work. The Spanish poet and prominent public figure Rafael Alberti later recalled: "Picasso had never been to Guernica, but the news of the destruction of the city struck him like a blow from a bull's horn."
The pace of creation of the picture seems simply incredible. And the dimensions of this canvas are simply colossal: 3.5 meters in height and about 8 meters in width. And Picasso wrote it in less than a month. International journalist A. V. Medvedenko said that the artist “worked furiously, like crazy ... The first days of Picasso stood at the easel for 12-14 hours. The work progressed so rapidly that one involuntarily got the impression that he had thought over the picture for a long time in the smallest details and details.
Convulsively distorted figures rush about on the huge black-and-white-gray canvas, and the first impression of the picture was chaotic. But with all the impression of violent chaos, the composition of "Guernica" is strictly and precisely organized.
The general concept of the picture was already looming in the first sketches, and the first draft of it was completed almost in the very first days of work on canvas. The main images were immediately determined: a torn horse, a bull, a defeated horseman, a mother with a dead child, a woman with a lamp. The catastrophe takes place in a cramped space, as if in an underground that has no way out. And Picasso managed to portray the almost impossible: the agony, anger, despair of people who survived the disaster. But how to "painterly" depict the suffering of people, their unpreparedness for sudden death and the threat rushing from the sky? How to show the event in its unthinkable reality, its terrible general meaning? And how, with all this, to express the power of compassion, anger and pain of the artist himself?
And this is the way Picasso chooses to comprehensively portray the tragedy that has unfolded. First of all, the plot and composition of the picture are based not on the development of a real event, but on the associative links of artistic images. All the construction and rhythm of this huge canvas correspond to its inner semantic movement. All images of the picture are conveyed in a simplified, generalizing strokes. Only that which cannot be dispensed with, which is directly included in the content of the picture, is drawn - everything else is discarded. In the faces of the mother and the man, facing the viewer, only the mouth wide open in a cry, visible openings of the nostrils, which have moved somewhere above the forehead of the eye, are left. No individuality, and the details would be superfluous here, they could split and thereby narrow the general idea. Pablo Picasso created the tragic feeling of death and destruction by the agony of the art form itself, which tears objects into hundreds of small fragments.
Next to the mother, holding a dead child in her arms with her head thrown back, is a bull with an expression of gloomy indifference. Everything around perishes, only the bull rises above the defeated, fixing a fixed, dull look in front of him. This contrast of suffering and indifference was in the first sketches for Guernica almost the main pillar of the whole picture. But Picasso did not stop there, and on the right side of the picture (next to the man who threw his hands up), two human faces soon appeared - anxious, tense, but with undistorted features, beautiful and full of determination. A woman with the profile of an ancient goddess bursts into the underground from somewhere above, as if from another world. In her outstretched hand she holds a burning lamp, her mouth is also wide open in a cry, but there is no one to hear it.
What is going on in Picasso's Guernica? Not the bombing of the city from aircraft: there are neither bombs nor the city itself in the picture. In the picture, tongues of fire are visible, but it is somewhere in the distance, outside the canvas. Then why do people and animals die? Who led them into a trap?
The direct bearer of evil in the picture is not personified, the dictator Franco and Hitler themselves, “those riders on a pig with a louse on a banner,” are too insignificant to be its only cause. Created on the basis of Spanish events, Guernica went beyond specific historical and time frames, anticipated events that did not even have a name at that time. Subsequently, the personification of fascism began to be seen in the image of a bull, to which a dying horse turns its dying curse. In vain does the genius of light also appeal to him: the bull does not heed anything and is ready to trample everything in its path. Other art historians (for example, N.D. Dmitrieva) suggested that perhaps the bull is not the bearer of evil will, but only ignorance, misunderstanding, deafness and blindness.
In June 1937, "Guernica" was exhibited in the Spanish pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, and crowds of people immediately rushed here. However, what appeared to their eyes confused many and caused a variety of disputes. The reaction of many was not at all what P. Picasso expected. The famous French architect Le Corbusier, who was present at the opening of the Spanish pavilion, later recalled: Guernica saw mostly the backs of visitors. However, not only ordinary visitors of the exhibition were not prepared for the perception of the picture, which in such a peculiar form tells about the horrors of war. Not all experts accepted Guernica: some critics denied artistry to the picture, calling the canvas a “propaganda document”, others tried to limit the content of the picture only to the framework of a specific event and saw in it only an image of the tragedy of the Basque people. And the Madrid magazine "Sabado Graphics" even wrote: "Guernica - a canvas of enormous size - is terrible. Perhaps this is the worst thing that Pablo Picasso created in his life."
Subsequently, Pablo Picasso, speaking about the fate of his offspring, remarked: "What have I not heard about my" Guernica "both from friends and from enemies." However, there were more friends. Dolores Ibarruri, for example, immediately praised Picasso's painting: "Guernica" is a terrible accusation against fascism and Franco. It mobilized and raised the nations, all the men and women of good will, to fight. If Pablo Picasso had not created anything in his life but Guernica, he could still be ranked among the best artists of our era. Danish cartoonist Herluf Bidstrup considered Guernica to be the most significant anti-war work. He wrote: “People of my generation remember well how the Fascists sadistically bombarded the city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The artist showed the brutal face of war, a reflection of that terrible reality in abstract forms, and it is still in our anti-war arsenal.”
And although Picasso's "Guernica" is silent, as are the people frozen in front of her, it still seems that screams, groans, crackles, the whistle of falling bombs and the deafening roar of explosions are heard. For the Spanish Republicans, the painting was a symbol of pain, anger and revenge. And they went into battle, carrying with them, like a banner, a reproduction of Guernica.
From the book Through the Labyrinths of the Avant-Garde the author Turchin V S From the book On Art [Volume 1. Art in the West] author Lunacharsky Anatoly Vasilievich From the book Lexicon of Nonclassics. Artistic and aesthetic culture of the XX century. author Team of authors From the book Everyday Life of Montparnasse in the Great Era. 1903-1930 author Crespel Jean-PaulPablo Picasso (1881–1973) One of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Born in Spain in the family of an artist and art teacher. He studied painting with him, at an art school, then at an art academy in Barcelona; in 1900 he first came to Paris, and since 1904 he lived almost constantly
From the book Everyday Life of Montmartre at the Time of Picasso (1900-1910) author Crespel Jean-Paul From the book "The Image of the Twentieth... Past and Present" author Turchin Valery Stefanovich From the book of 100 famous artists of the XIX-XX centuries. author Rudycheva Irina Anatolievna From the author's book"Blue Whores" by Picasso Saying that Degas only watched his ballerinas dance, while Picasso himself danced with them, Elia Faure remarkably expressed the animal side of the artist, who, by the way, never refused to dance with strangers.
From the author's book From the author's bookPablo Picasso History, it seems, did not know an artist whose work would cause so much controversy. Nobody talks calmly about Picasso; some vilify him, others exalt him. Hundreds of books in various languages are dedicated to him. Apollinaire and Eluard, Mayakovsky and Aragon wrote about him,
From the author's bookPicasso Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - Spanish painter and sculptor, one of the most recognized masters of fine arts of the twentieth century. Art is a lie that leads us to the truth. In painting, one should act as in life - directly. Painting is stronger than me and
The Moscow branch of the Instituto Cervantes hosts the exhibition "Guernica: Spain 1937 - Moscow 2017". Three dozen artists from Russia, Spain and Latin America turned to the famous painting by Pablo Picasso in connection with the 80th anniversary of its appearance. Tatyana Pigareva, head of the culture department of the Cervantes Institute, spoke about the creation and reading of Guernica.
Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica" - a 3.5 by 7.8 m canvas - in 33 days. He was then 55 years old. In fact, “having passed half of earthly life” (Dante considered 35 “half” of his path, the numbers rhyme), Picasso creates his main picture. As "Don Quixote" was born from the idea of a parody story, so "Guernica" was to become nothing more than a masterpiece of agitprop. But once Dante interjected into the conversation, let us recall his idea of a “multiple-thinking” interpretation of poetry from a letter to Cangrande della Scala: an interpretation of the historical, moral, allegorical and “anagogical” (sublime). From the reality of the first plan to the realities of the "higher order". Guernica clearly deserves Dante's optics.
Dora Maar
Historical interpretation
In January 1937, the government of the Spanish Republic commissioned Picasso a monumental work for the pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, which was to open in the summer. There is a civil war going on. The most famous Spanish artist living in France has already been appointed director of the Prado Museum. He "manages" the museum from a distance, but is very proud of the title. For the pavilion of the warring country (whose main task is to declare the viability of the republic and raise funds for the people's army), Picasso's participation is the most important trump card. The Spanish Parisian has never painted political pictures (the dove of peace will be born in 1949, “flying out” just from Guernica), but he accepts the order. And also the fee. Republicans talk about the "gift" of Picasso, who was only paid for the canvas and paints. The real figure will be published later: 150,000 francs, 15% of the cost of the entire pavilion of Spain, 9 times more than Picasso received for the most expensive of the previously sold works.
For four months, the artist, who is in a creative crisis, does not write anything. And then Guernica intervened in history, or rather, on the contrary. April 26, Monday, aircraft of the German legion "Condor", Franco's allies, bomb the peaceful city for three and a half hours. Guernica - a symbol of the traditional freedoms of the Basque people (under the local oak, the kings of Spain swore an oath to respect these freedoms) - becomes a symbol of the horrors of the war of the twentieth century. “Only five whole houses remained in Guernica”, “A tragedy unseen by the world” - Parisian newspapers are full of such headlines. The death toll ranges from 200 to 1,000. Everything is relative, of course. Tragically relative. Guernica is small compared to the Holocaust and Hiroshima, but there was a special symbolic intensity in this first bombardment of a peaceful city in European history. After all, the sacrifice of Christ is statistically small compared to the massacres of Attila or Genghis Khan.
The same mistake is repeated in art history texts about Guernica: the government of the republic did not order a painting about the tragedy of Guernica, the order was received four months before the bombing, and the topic was not specified. But Guernica, as Rafael Alberti recalled, "slayed Picasso like a blow from a bull's horn." She became a catalyst, an explosion that knocked Picasso out of the crisis - into work. On May 1, the first draft appears: a bull, a wounded horse, a woman with a lamp in her hand. Conditionality is extreme. Sketch details vary. Either a winged Pegasus flies out of a wound on the side of the horse, and the horse itself writhes in pain, then it tramples on a wounded warrior with its hooves, then it turns into a dejected child’s horse (it’s not for nothing that Picasso dreams of “writing like a child” during these years), then he rears up with frightening grin. The bull has either a formidable appearance, or a detached, frozen, or completely human, with large sad eyes. On the first day there are only five sketches, the pace of work increases in rhythm crescendo, in addition to the original trinity, the prostrate bodies of a warrior and a woman, a sobbing mother with a dead child, appear. Picasso himself said that he wrote this work in a "state of trance", without stopping, for 14 hours a day. “I did not let go of the brushes, like the republican soldiers - guns,” he admits in an interview. On May 9, the first sketch of the entire composition is dated. 11 May Dora Maar, Picasso's muse from the time of Guernica, photographs the first composition on canvas - in a new workshop on Rue des Grands Augustin, 7. Her photographs will reflect the eight phases of work on the painting - and this series of photographs will be a unique testimony: a monument to the evolution of the idea and the birth of a masterpiece.
In the first photo, in the center of the composition, the raised fist of a wounded - but triumphant - soldier is accentuated, a visual metaphor for the republican slogan "No pasarán"("They will not pass"). The action takes place in the square, flames engulfed the house, the bodies of the victims mixed up, a frightened woman collides with the murdered woman, a burning woman with outstretched arms falls on them from the window. Everything flies, runs and crumbles. In the second picture, a sheaf of ears appears in the soldier's muscular fist, followed by the rising sun. But as the work progresses, frontal political statements, the language of the poster, disappear from the picture. In place of the sun, there is now a mysterious lamp-eye with sharp rays, the position of the dead soldier changes: the fist is lowered, and the body with outstretched arms rather refers to the crucifixion. The dead woman disappears, triangles appear more and more clearly in the composition, the construction of an antique frieze with antique clarity. The bull moves from the center to the corner, curled up in a semicircle around the woman with the dead child. And in place of the chopped off tree (the only direct - and very quickly disappeared - reference to the specifics of Guernica) there is a corner of the table with a wounded bird. The action moves inside the room - more precisely, a symbolic, broken interior space - where the door is open on the side, the floor is lined (either tiles, or a map of military operations), and time is frozen.
The same mistake is repeated in art history texts about Guernica: the government of the republic did not order a painting about the tragedy of Guernica, the order was received four months before the bombing, and the topic was not specified.
Picasso tried to the last to introduce elements of color into his work: he glued red tears to his faces, cut dresses from wallpaper and colorful paper for three women (burning, running and sobbing over a child). The red-gold robe of the sobbing moved to the collage "Femmes à leur toilette", which now adorns the residence of the French ambassador in Madrid (looking at this work, you understand that the duende of Guernica saved the masterpiece from bad taste). At the first stages of work, a running woman with bare buttocks had a piece of toilet paper in her hand - this physiology referred to the series of grotesque satirical engravings "Franco's Dream and Lies", which Picasso was finishing at the same time. In one of the latest versions of Guernica, instead of the drawn paper, a piece of real paper appears - glued to the left hand. Closer to the finale, only fragments of color remain - red tears on the cheek of a running woman and a wound on the neck of a dead child. In June, a delegation of the republican government inspects the work. With them, Picasso tore off the last blotches of the collage from the canvas: red scraps of paper, a tear and a wound. Everyone applauded. “We saw how Guernica acquired an amazing restraint, worthy of the monastic restraint of Escorial, but immersed in the horror of chaos,” recalled one of those present.
The name "Guernica" also appeared only at the end of the work. Here the versions diverge. Someone claims that a delegation of Basque politicians visited Picasso's workshop and one of them exclaimed: "It's Guernica!" Other witnesses claim that the name was suggested by Paul Eluard, who was just writing a poem. Victory de Guernica, or Christian Zervos, editor-in-chief of the magazine Cahiers d'Art, commissioned by Dora Maar to photograph the stages of work. It is important that Picasso deliberately departs from a specific historical plot in the process of work, but agrees to the title - extremely effective - creating the ground for subsequent disagreements and disputes.
Dora Maar
The controversy began as soon as the work left the workshop on June 4 and took its place in the main hall of the Spanish pavilion. Particularly persistent Marxists demanded that this "Cubist something" be removed. Louis Aragon lamented that an excessive inclination towards the avant-garde robbed the work of "the semantic efficacy of socialist realism". The reaction of the public was also mixed. Le Corbusier, who was present at the opening of the pavilion, wrote: “Guernica saw mainly the backs of visitors, it seemed repulsive to them.” Time sets the prism of perception. In 1937, peaceful Europe wanted to see something else: progress, the triumph of technology, a bright future that had not yet turned into the yawning heights that Picasso saw in his Guernica. The press enthusiastically wrote about the pavilions of Germany and the USSR (the latter was crowned with "Worker and Collective Farm Woman"), and the pavilion of Spain - built by prominent architects Luis Lacasa and José Luis Sert (Sert's last landmark project will be the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona) - was not even mentioned in catalog of "main objects of the exhibition".
Particularly persistent Marxists demanded that this "Cubist something" be removed.
After Paris, "Guernica" will go on a world tour of England, Scandinavia, the United States, and then find a temporary residence - "until the onset of democracy in Spain", as Picasso bequeathed - in New York MOMA. Since the early 1970s, the return of the painting has been discussed. Franco was said not to mind. But Picasso, as expected, did not agree. After long negotiations (Picasso's daughter demanded that abortions and divorces be allowed in Spain first), on September 10, 1981, Guernica arrived in Spain aboard the Lope de Vega. The epic play was drawing to a close. On October 25, on the day of the centenary of the birth of Picasso, a new exposition opened in the Prado - in Cason del Buen Retro, a branch of the museum: "Guernica" and dozens of sketches. The painting was hidden behind bulletproof glass for the first years, with gendarmes on duty next to it. Dolores Ibarruri, chairman of the Communist Party of Spain, will put an end to history in another fiery speech: “The war is over. The last exile has arrived in his homeland." In 1992, Guernica will move from the Prado to the Reina Sofia Art Center and become its main, iconic exhibit. Now two caretakers vigilantly guard it from photographers.
Moral interpretation
When the world experienced the horrors of World War II, the prophetic meaning of Guernica took on a new meaning. The title of "the main anti-war masterpiece of the 20th century" sounds formal, but reflects the essence. In the context of Spanish art, Picasso's masterpiece stood in line with Velasquez's "Surrender of Breda" and Goya's "May 3 Execution". The dream of Miguel Sugasa, director of the Prado until March 2017, was to create a "Hall of Peace" in Salon de Reinos, the museum's second branch, the renovation competition for which has recently ended. There, according to the Sugasy project, all three masterpieces were to be located (especially since the "Surrender of Breda" for Salon de Reinos was written). In the layout of the winning design by Norman Foster and Carlos Rubio, the director Prado's dream (as well as the will of Picasso himself, as Sugas repeatedly emphasized) was embodied. Such an “attempt on a masterpiece” created a scandal between museums, the king of Spain assured that Guernica would not leave the Reina Sofia Art Center, and Sugas soon resigned. The Hall of Peace fiasco was one of the reasons.
The Surrender of Breda was written in 1635, 300 years before Guernica. Justin of Nassau, governor of Breda, taken by the Spaniards after a long siege (this was one of the few victories in a series of many defeats in the war with the Netherlands, and the "spiritual" role of the event was paramount), hands over the keys to the city to the Spaniards' commander-in-chief Ambrosio Spinola. In this era, war is the main man's business. Yes, in the depths of the picture the battlefield is smoking, but both the winners and the vanquished are written by Velazquez with the same degree of respect and detachment as aristocrats and jesters in his other paintings. The Spaniards have won, but Spinola does not allow the governor to kneel. Velasquez writes not the horror of the massacre, but the nobility of true victory. The world has not yet lost its integrity, the war is still worthy of a ceremonial portrait. In Goya, war is already revealed as a metaphysical evil. The evil spirits of the Caprichos and the soldiers of the Disasters of War share the same demonic grin. The ranks of the French, killing the Madrid rebels in the May 3 Shooting, merge into a faceless multi-legged monster. But behind the hill of Principe Pio, where the atrocity is committed, the palaces and churches of Madrid still rise. The very matter of the world is alive, evil is transient. A fearless man in a white shirt throws up his hands. This is the triumph of the crucifixion, but it is a triumph. Picasso's "Guernica" is a tragic and incredible insight - and a warning to humanity. Ahead of time, the metaphysical horror that the Second World War, Hiroshima, all those upcoming massacres and terrorist attacks that inevitably find themselves in the field of attraction of Guernica will reveal. This is not cubism or surrealism: this is chaos, this is the death of matter itself.
The woman who falls in Guernica from a burning house has her arms thrown up in the same way as the hero in a white shirt in Goya's The Execution (in the sketches, Picasso changes the position of her hands several times and stops at an explicit quote). Many write about it. But no one paid attention to the fact that the bull in "Guernica" is bent in the same way as the horse in "Surrender of Breda" by Velázquez. On the left flank of the "Guernica" - Goya, on the right - Velasquez. Perhaps this is an accident. But the three tragedies of the war - even though they did not meet in the "Hall of Peace" - are inseparable in the minds of the world.
Allegorical interpretation
The interpreters of Guernica have enough interpretations and versions for a whole polyphonic choir, turning into a cacophony. What does horse mean? The horse is a bloody sacrifice; no - this is the people who threw off the horseman-aristocrat; no - this is an allegory of Francoism and nothing else; no - this is an allegory of a woman seduced and pierced by the sword of betrayal; no, it's Spain itself! You are mistaken, Spain is a bull! No, the bull is the forces of evil, world evil, fascism! Exactly the opposite: he is the protector of a woman with a child, he is a force. Yes, this is the Minotaur, macho, Picasso himself, a self-portrait, is it really incomprehensible! Wait, the self-portrait is a bust of a warrior, Picasso adored antiquity. No, a warrior is a torrero - a soldier of the republic - a ruined civilization. Nothing like that, a destroyed civilization is a house on fire. No, it's a wounded bird. The bird is saving America! You are mistaken, everything is much simpler: this is a dove from Merced Square in Malaga, where the artist spent his childhood. Have you seen the sketches? This is the transformation of the Pegasus that flew out of the horse's wound in the early versions! Wait, her wing is broken, she's a bombing victim! So, where is the bird anyway? You can't see her...
For the ideological struggle in the picture lacked clarity. Picasso answered all questions about the symbolism of the characters that he had already said everything with colors and words were superfluous.
At first, the Republicans tried to fight the allegorical complexity of the picture. Juan Larrea, a poet and friend of Picasso, even wrote him an official letter in 1947 asking him to “confirm in monosyllables” that a wounded horse is a symbol of agonizing Francoism (think of Florence asking Dante for written confirmation that the lion at the entrance to hell is this is the republic, but the lynx is the papal curia).
For the ideological struggle in the picture lacked clarity. For eternity - more than enough. Picasso answered all questions about the symbolism of the characters that he had already said everything with colors and words were superfluous. The multiplicity of allegories in no way overshadows, but only enriches the meaning.
The semantic field of "Guernica" contains all the searches of Picasso: "The Maidens of Avignon" and bullfighting scenes, "Minotauromachia" and "Crucifixion", triangular compositions of the blue period and sharp corners of cubism. With all the total novelty in Guernica, one can find echoes of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, Beat of Liebansky's Commentary on the Apocalypse, Ravenna mosaics, Romanesque painting, paintings by Baldung Green, Pordenone's Crucifixion and Rubens' The Horrors of War (there is also a woman with arms raised, and a mother with a dead baby, and a prone man, and Venus, stretching out her hand almost in the same way as a “mask” with a lamp). Clearly involved in the allegorical choir and Picasso's personal life. During the period of work on Guernica, he is still married to Olga Khokhlova, but the young Marie-Therese Walter has just given birth to his daughter Maya, and the new muse Dora Maar is actively involved in the work on the picture. And now the bull (somewhat reminiscent of Picasso's self-portraits) looks at the woman falling from the burning house, and at the woman with the child, and at the "mask" that illuminates the path. Yes, and this bull-Minotaur is located just like Velazquez in Las Meninas. What's on the back of the canvas? It remains to look.
Anagogic interpretation
Chatting with Paul Éluard in the legendary café Les Deux Magots in Place Saint-Germain, Picasso saw a woman in white gloves playing with a knife. She dropped it vertically onto her open palm on the table. The point sometimes fell between the fingers, then dug into the hand. Picasso asked for a bloody glove as a gift. This is how they met Dora Maar. It was she who found a workshop for Picasso at number 7 on Great Augustinian Street, where a huge canvas of “Guernica” fit. This studio used to host meetings of the leftist group Counterattack under the leadership of Georges Bataille, whose lover was Dora Maar before meeting Picasso. The history of this acquaintance is described by many biographers. But to complete the picture, I look through the biography of Bataille, and suddenly an incredible detail: that same attic, “headquarters” Counterattack, was described by Balzac in The Unknown Masterpiece. Incredible, impossible coincidence! This means that “Guernica” was created where Balzac placed the action of the story, in which in 1831 he predicted the birth of avant-garde painting, describing the portrait of the “Beautiful Noiseza” - “a random combination of strokes, outlined by many strange lines, forming, as it were, a fence of colors ... chaos colors, tones, indefinite shades, forming a kind of shapeless nebula” - what remains of the masterpiece, on which the character of Balzac, the brilliant artist Frenhofer, worked for 10 years. I ask Parisian friends to send a photo of the house. On the facade there is a memorial plaque: “Picasso lived here from 1936 to 1955. In this workshop he wrote Guernica. In the same house, Balzac placed the action of his story “The Unknown Masterpiece”.
Dora Maar
Blessed are the inventors of the bicycle. It turned out that the fact is well known. But few people remember the plot of the story, the story of abstraction and one more important detail. The heroes of Balzac see in the corner of the picture “the tip of a lovely leg, a living leg” - “a fragment that has survived from an incredible, slow, gradual destruction”, it appears “like the torso of Venus in the middle of the ruins of a burned city”. What do we see in the right corner of Guernica? A terrible, ugly, crippled female leg. Fragment of the "beautiful Noiseza" of the 20th century. Noiseses from Guernica. Such a coincidence cannot be an accident. In addition, Picasso illustrated Balzac's "Unknown Masterpiece" in 1927. Like Frenhofer, Picasso cannot complete his masterpiece. For years, he writes "sketches" for the finished work, endless "Weepers", "Weeping Women", "Women with a Dead Child", even more brutal and frightening than the characters in "Guernica". The meeting of two masterpieces - Balzac and Picasso - at 7 Great Augustinian Street could not fail to take place. This is a story about the infinity and incompleteness of art. About the unattainability of the ideal and embodiment, about deafness to prophecy. About the mission of the artist. About the pain of being unheard. About threatening chaos. About everything important in Guernica.
And yet, medieval scholastics correlated the "anagogic", sublime, interpretation of texts with hope. Guernica is written in black and white, but most viewers remember it in color. This is another mystery of the picture. The color is alive, but it is hidden under the ash-black horror of destruction. Picasso has three sources of light in the closed space of the picture: an eye-lamp, a candle-lamp, and a window of a burning house. Yellow, red and blue are the academic "tricolor" from which all the colors of the rainbow, all the colors of the world, are born. A flower sprouts over the fragments of the sword. Perhaps the story of the hidden color of "Guernica" is another parable of Picasso. A parable that life still defeats death in a way unknown to science. I would love to believe it.
It just so happened that the Spanish land gave the world many brilliant names. Some scientists, explaining this phenomenon, refer to the genetic heritage of warlike and talented tribes. Astrologers say that powerful energy flows intersect over Spain. But we are sure that all the factors mentioned above are present. But, nevertheless, to be an educated person and not to join the Spanish cultural heritage is simply impossible. We will help you to place accents in all the variety of masterpieces of Spanish painters. This article will talk about the Reina Sofia Museum, or rather about her pride, the painting "Guernica", which belongs to the brush of Pablo Picasso.
Three reasons to visit the Reina Sofia Museum
Firstly, it is impossible to say that you have been to Madrid if you have not visited the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum. These are the three pillars on which an outstanding history of fine art rests.
Secondly, the Reina Sofia Museum has the best collection of paintings of the 20th century. Almost all the paintings either belong to the brushes of Spanish artists, or artists whose work and biography are closely connected with Spain. This museum contains the greatest collection of Spanish avant-garde artists.
And, thirdly, only in this museum you can see the painting "Guernica" by Picasso, which, despite its venerable age, still remains the most impressive work of art of all times and peoples.
The touching genius of Pablo Picasso
His full name consists of 21 words. As well as his creative personality consists of many facets. He was born at the end of the 19th century, and his life and work completely changed the 20th century. The odious Pablo left his last name under paintings, sculptures, graphic works, and theatrical scenery. He was known as a ceramist and designer. He always belonged to Spain, and his work began to belong to the world. His paintings at world auctions break records in terms of sales value.
His whole life was connected with painting. Picasso is an example of not accidental fame, but many years of work and work, which nurtured his artistic genius. The pinnacle of Picasso's work was cubism. But this genre was not invented by the artist by chance. At first, Pablo experimented with color, alternating "blue" and "pink" periods of creativity. After innovative techniques in color, the artist began to search for the ideal form. He completely rejected realism with its visual-cognitive function. Instead, his paintings were filled with geometric elements that were flat on their own, but all together created a harmonious volume and three-dimensional form.
The biography of Picasso is filled with many amazing events. He was a man with a deep sense of the world around him. Two wars passed by his life, which convinced the artist that peace on earth is the highest good. Picasso made no secret of his pacifism. He hated war so much that he did not even depict it directly, only through a grid of symbols and allegories. This is how his legendary Guernica looks like, which has been admired and applauded for almost 100 years.
"Guernica" as the shortest history of fascism
Picasso has always rejected force that promotes violence. He did not succumb to the slogans of fascism. Through which more than once he was called for interrogation. Once, a German officer, looking at a reproduction of "Guernica", asked: - Is this your doing? - No, yours. Feel free to take it as a souvenir. - Briefly answered the artist. One can only guess why the German commander left the audacity of the Spanish artist unpunished.
The painting was commissioned by the government of the Spanish Republic to participate in the world exhibition in Paris in 1937. The exhibits were supposed to be dedicated to the theme of modernity. The whole world knows about the city of Guernica in the Basque Country. This city was completely destroyed in a few hours as a result of an aerial bombardment by Luftwaffe pilots. It was during the Spanish Civil War. Pablo had never been to this city in his life. But the news of its destruction shocked the artist. “Friends, bombs are destroying entire cities. But who will revive them from the ashes?” the artist wrote in a letter to his friend.
"Guernica" is all the pain and horror of fascism. It depicts death, violence, despair and chilling fear. So, according to the artist, the documentary filming from the main square of Guernica during the bombing should have looked like. Therefore, "Guernica" is written in black and white to be as close as possible to the newspaper chronicle. This picture is a symbol of fascist evil, grief and human cruelty.
The artist worked on it like crazy, 10 or even 12 hours a day. The next month the picture was ready. Picasso's friends recalled that after writing it, Pablo fell ill, he was in a terrible depressed state. And after he recovered, he never became the same Picasso. The picture can be "read" for hours. Art historians to this day find new images in it and interpret them in different ways. One thing remains unchanged - this painting is so amazing that one should dream of seeing it at least once.
