Motivation
For all the imposing scale of the completed canvas, the first sketch was little more than a doodle on a scrap of paper. Picasso was motivated, somewhat reluctantly, by an open-ended commission from the Spanish Government to make a large painting for their national pavilion in the prestigious 1937 Paris Expo. They had even provided a craftsman to build the frame and stretch the canvas. Spain's newly elected Nationalist Government was feeling ambitious. It sent a flattering deputation to Picasso, who then struggled to get started. After working without conviction on several themes – the still-life group, the model, the artist in the studio, etc. – he heard news of a shocking development in the Civil War. The sketch marked a turning point in his output.
By April 1937, Picasso’s homeland was in its tenth month of war. Each side had seen gains and losses; each had accused the other of war crimes. During the afternoon of the 27 April disturbing rumours began to circulate that Guernica, a town in the Basque country, had been flattened. It was market day; many farmers from the surrounding countryside were carrying out their weekly trade. The town had no military significance, although it was seen as the symbolic heartland of Basque 'national’ identity. The following day, French papers carried photographs and eye-witness accounts. 1,645 were reported dead; nearly a thousand wounded.[1]
Picasso produced his first hasty sketches on 1 May. Over the next five weeks, not only had he completed the painting, but also generated a large number of preparatory studies. The impressive output has survived as a unit. It now fills three rooms in the Reina Sofía. Like the painting itself, most of the studies are carried out in black, white and shades of grey, reflecting the huge psychological impact of the newspaper coverage. On display with the work is a series of photographs that record the painting’s development. In the same galleries are two sculptures and other studies that, whilst standing outside the five-week time frame, contain strong thematic links with the painting. It is a remarkable record of the process that led to the creation of a great work of art. For all this, Guernica remains an enigmatic piece, which is open to wide interpretation in almost every detail.
Meet the characters
The huge canvas contains nine characters. Three of these – a kneeling women, a fatally wounded horse and a fallen warrior – occupy the foreground. Together they create a classic triangular structure. The base of the triangle runs along the whole of the bottom edge, whilst the apex reaches the top of the painting.
Outside the triangle, two more women fill the space to our right. The one on the far right flings her head and hands skywards whilst closer in, the other leans from a window. Her elongated right arm enters the top of the main triangle where she clasps a lamp that is illuminated by a small flame. To the left is an electric light. Its bulb is framed in a shallow lampshade, reflecting light downwards in jagged rays, which stop abruptly near the horse’s head.
The remaining area on our left is dominated by a bull. In front of the bull, a women is holding a dead child. Her head too is tilted upwards, her mouth contorted with grief. Behind the bull, a small bird is hidden away in the darkness. Like the women at each edge of the painting, its head is also thrown back, crying out to the heavens from a table hard against the back of the room. Space is highly constricted throughout the canvas. The claustrophobia is enhanced by a pattern of contrasting lights and darks. The background, of ambiguously related internal and external walls, compounds this.
The commission came at a time of high emotional ambiguity in Picasso's life. Dora Maar, the photographer who captured Guernica through its different stages, was also his lover, a position she reluctantly shared with Marie-Thérèse Walter. The Tate gallery has paintings of both women. They are often hung within sight of each other. Both women appear again in Guernica: Dora as the model for the two anguished women, Marie-Thérèse for the two fluid-limbed witnesses who look on in horror.
It is not my idea to give this meaning
Ambiguity is a hallmark of much of Picasso's work. He rarely makes the interpreter's life easy. When asked to explain the bull or the horse, he insisted on the primacy of image over interpretation:
