Guernica, Picasso Masterpiece - What He Told the Gestapo About It, WW2 Paris: Spanish Civil War

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Thu May 11, 2023, 08:41 AM - Edit history (2)

- 2 mins. 'Guernica,' Picasso's masterpiece (1937) is one of the most famous paintings in the world. BBC News.
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* That time Picasso gave the perfect answer to the Gestapo during WW2,' The Vintage News, Aug. 19, 2016. Ed.

Born on October 25, 1881, in Malaga, the co-founder of Cubism moved around a lot during his early life. His family shifted to A Coruna when he was 10 years old and stayed there 4 years, before moving to Barcelona. Two years later, the young artist moved to Madrid, where he studied at the most prestigious art school in Spain. Then a poor student, Picasso returned to Barcelona in 1899 & remained there until the beginning of the 20th century. His new home? Paris, where he spent the majority of his adult life. Picasso opened a studio in the French capital and created most of his marvelous paintings.

When the 2nd World War came to France, Pablo chose to remain in Paris, unlike many other artists who fled from the German occupation. As his artistic style was considered to be degenerate by the Nazi regime, Picasso did not exhibit his work publically during the war. With the city under curfew, Parisians were constantly arrested & interrogated, and the artist was no exception. Picasso was particularly harassed by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. On one occasion, while the Nazis searched his apartment, a Gestapo officer saw a photograph of one of Picasso’s most famous works, Guernica.

The 1937 painting depicts the bombing of Guernica, a city in Spain attacked by the German and Italian fascists at the direction of Francisco Franco and the Spanish nationalists.

When the Gestapo officer spotted the photograph, he asked Picasso, “Did you do that?” only to receive the artist’s answer: “No, you did.”

During the war, Picasso created several major pieces, including the Still Life With Guitar in 1942 and The Charnel House in 1944. At the same time, he was creating sculptures with bronze, even though the Germans forbade bronze casting. His friends within the French Resistance supplied him with smuggled bronze. A dozen of these pieces, as well as prints & drawings, were donated to Warsaw’s art museum by the artist himself. He also wrote poems & plays during the war years, most of them scatological & erotic. Picasso returned the favors of the French Resistance by providing shelter to anyone who was sent by them.

A part of his defiance of the occupation was the reading of one of his plays in 1944, with Albert Camus as director & the acting performed by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir. The famous artist remained in Paris until it was liberated in 1944. Treated as a hero, the 63-year-old painter was constantly visited by friends & admirers who were delighted by his acts during the war. However, the fact that Spain was still under the command of Franco upset him and led Picasso to join the French Communist Party. Even though the Communists had radical views towards art, preferring realism, they allowed the artist to continue with his unconventional approach...https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/08/19/that-time-picasso-gave-the-perfect-answer-to-the-gestapo-during-ww2/?andro=1&chrome=1&A1c=1
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- 3 mins. Ernest Hemingway on Fascism & the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). PSB, 2020.
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- Wiki. Guernica, *TOWN in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. - On April 26, 1937, Guernica was bombed by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, in one of the first aerial bombings. The attack inspired Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica, depicting his outrage at the attack. During the Spanish Civil War (1936 -1939), Guernica was the scene of the bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria.

According to official Basque figures, 1,654 civilians were killed, but German sources report a round figure of 300 civilians killed in the bombing, according to the German Bundeswehr Magazine. The raid was requested by Francisco Franco to aid in his overthrowing the Basque Government & the Spanish Republican government. The town was devastated, though the Biscayan assembly & the Oak of Guernica survived.

The Bombing of Guernica, which went on continuously for 3 hours, is considered the beginning of the Luftwaffe doctrine of terror bombing civilian targets in order to demoralize the enemy. Pablo Picasso painted his Guernica painting to commemorate the horrors of the bombing & René Iché made a violent sculpture the day after the bombing. It has inspired musical compositions by Octavio Vazquez (Gernika Piano Trio), René-Louis Baron, Lenny White, & Mike Batt (performed by Katie Melua), & poems by Paul Eluard (Victory of Guernica), & Uys Krige (Nag van die Fascistiese Bomwerpers) (English translation from the Afrikaans: Night of the Fascist Bombers). There is also a short film from 1950, by Alain Resnais, titled Guernica...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica
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- Wiki. Guernica *PAINTING, a large 1937 oil painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It is one of his best-known works, regarded by many art critics as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history. It is exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. The grey, black, and white painting, on a canvas 3.49 meters (11 ft 5 in) tall and 7.76 meters (25 ft 6 in) across, portrays the suffering wrought by violence and chaos. Prominent in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, screaming women, a dead baby, a dismembered soldier, and flames.

Picasso painted Guernica at his home in Paris in response to the 26 April 1937 bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain that was bombed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, * Guernica was exhibited at the Spanish display at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, and then at other venues around the world. The touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief. The painting soon became famous and widely acclaimed, and it helped bring worldwide attention to the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)

[Goonch]

1. 👇👇👇👁️👁️

[appalachiablue]

2. Wonderful, thank you!

[JudyM]

3. There must be art coming out of /depicting the attack on Ukraine, too...