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Looking at Guernica
:: The small town of Guernica in Northern Spain was subjected to four hours of aerial bombradment on 26th April 1937. This systematic attack on an undefended civilian population in the heartland of the Basque country - Guernica was the traditional centre of governance for the region - sent shock waves throughout Europe and around the world. In six weeks of furious creativity Pablo Picasso created the great black, grey and white mural, 'Guernica' which has become a symbol of and a continuing protest against the 'shock and awe' of technological warfare and of the continuing threat of totalitarian power to culture, democracy and civilisation.
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:: Looking at Guernica has sections about the bombing; how it was reported; Picasso's painting and examples of hundreds of versions and related artworks of the Guernica image created since 1936, including the Belfast Peace Wall version and David Smith's great 'Medals of Dishonor'.
:: Guernica was shown in England in 1938/39 - to mark the seventieth anniversary the UN's tapestry version is showing at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of an installation by Goshka Macuga called 'The Nature of the Beast' which draws on the 'cover up' of the tapestry at the time of Colin Powell's speech about 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq in 2003
:: Republican Poster (left) shows the bombing of Guernica; it shows the types of bombs used and the effects on the town; the smaller bomb is an incendiary - the larger a high-explosive one. In the cloud is an outline drawing of the civic centre of the town with the symbolic Tree of Gernika, which survived the bombing. Image: National Archives on Flickr Commons ... About Flicker Commons, National Archives and Crown Copyright.
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The UN's Guernica tapestry in London: April 2009 - 2010
To mark the 70th anniversary of the exhibition of Picasso's Guernica in London in 1939 the Whitechapel Gallery in London, is showing the full-size UN tapestry copy and other material about the original exhibition. For those in the East End of London what they saw in Picasso's painting in 1939 they experienced for real shortly afterwards during the London blitz.
In 1938, the original painting was brought to London and shown in two venues: the New Burlington Galleries in the glitzy West End and the Whitechapel Gallery in the very different environs of the East End. The exhibition of the painting acted as a fund-rasier for Spanish refugees, the International Brigades and support for the Republican Cause in the Spanish Civil War - at the Whitechapel boots in good condition to send to Spain were accepted in lieu of a money contribution.
The exhibition of the UN's tapestry Guernica is part of the re-opening of The Whitechapel Gallery following its refurbishment and will feature an installation by Polish-born London-based artist Goshka Macuga called The Nature of the Beast'. The installation includes the tapestry hanging in front of a blue curtain with a blue carpet linking it to a round glass-topped table cum display case housing archive materials from the 1930's and of Guernica as an image of protest since. The round table/display case references the circular 'Mercury Fountain' by American artist Alexander Calder - Mercury is the 'messenger' god ... today we might say 'media' - in the centre of the courtyard in the Spanish Pavilion where 'Guernica' was first shown in 1937 and the circular table at the centre of the UN Security Council chamber.
The installation revolves around the speech in February 2003 by US Secretary of State Colin Powell giving the 'proofs' of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and his statement to the world's press afterwards during which the UN Guernica tapestry - which usually forms the backdrop for these media events - was covered by a blue drape. The installation also includes a video and carpet about the Iraq war and a bronze portrait bust of Colin Powell, in cubist style, holding a phial of anthrax. A limited editon newspaper with information about the installation and an interview with the artist has also been produced - first come first served!
In an attempt to open up the narratives of mediated images of 'war'; the installation space and the circular table are open to groups wishing to hold meetings during the coming year - free to use in exchange for records of the meeting to add to the growing archive at the Whitechapel and further develop its mission to serve the community. Goshka Macuga says, The image of Guernica has functioned as a backdrop to discussion [so often before] I hope it can serve the same purpose here."
:: Read some more about the original Whitechapel exhibition - further down this page.
:: Read some more about the UN tapestry and the Blue Cloth Cover-up story - both further down this page.
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Guernica 70th anniversary: 26th April 1937 - 26th April 2007
On April 26, 1937, at 4:40 in the afternoon - seventy years ago - planes of the Condor Legion bombed the small town of Guernica in Northern Spain. The planes were German, supporting the Nationalist rebels. The town was devasted and many civilians lost their lives. The news of the atrocity was reported world-wide.
Picasso responded by painting the great mural called Guernica which has become a symbol of the devastation and anguish of war.
:: The Times tells the story - their original report in 1937 with links to archive reports and letters.
:: BBC story
:: Los Angelos Times story
:: Witnesses Luis Iriondo and Pedro Balino remember: report from Guernica by Billy Briggs, 2007.
:: Witnesses remember on You Tube This video in Spanish - Pedro Baliño, Miren Gomeza y Luis Iriondo, sobrevivientes del Bombardeo de Gernika, en su 71º aniversario, el 26 de abril de 2008.
:: Exhibition 2007 at Basque Museum, Bayonne ... includes the black and white tapestry version and material about the tree of Gernika.
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News reports, 28th April 1937.
Elizabeth Wilkinson was secretary of the Spanush Women's Committee for Help to Spain' and was sent to the Basque Country by the Daily Worker.. She arrived in Guernica - there is some uncertainty about the time. "At eleven o'clock at night the whole town was in flames, not a single house standing. The streets and the square were crammed with goods and chattels snatched from the inferno. The people still searching for missing relatives, for wives, daughters, husbands, sweethearts and children." The report was filed from Bilbao on 27th April.
A "special correspondent" described how "Hundreds of people were trapped in the narrow streets. I could hear people screaming while bombs were crashing half a mile away. People in panic ran in all directions...Jose Finas Hospital was destropyed by fire and the wounded people were roasted alive.
Both reports from the Daily Worker, 28th April 1937.
::: MORE ON THE BOMBING OF GUERNICA, FURTHER DOWN THIS PAGE
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Guernica Now and Then.
'ATZO TA GAUR': a film constructed of still images showing the town of Guernica now and Guernica after the bombing. Piano soundtrack. Some of the edited matches work very well. Duration: 3:03. Made in Spain, 2007.
:: Atzo Ta Gaur
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Picasso's 'Guernica'
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GUERNICA MURAL: Peace Wall Belfast 2007
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Sound clips from an interview with Mark Ervine...
A short interview cum conversation with Mark Ervine was carried out in the John Hewitt bar in Belfast during the final gathering of the International Brigades weekend of events, 12th - 14th October 2007.
Danny Devenny and Mark Ervine
Photo: by Katie Keenan
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Why we made the mural... Click the arrow - twice...
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How people responded Click the arrow - twice...
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Opening of the mural: speech by Bob Doyle
Bob Doyle, Ireland's last Brigadista, visited Belfast from August 3rd-5th, 2007, to officially open the murals; and, as is the way in Belfast, it rained. Bob's speech ended with these words:"Take up the fight for the noblest of causes, the Liberation of Mankind. Then our comrades will not have died in vain but will be our inspiration. Together we fight on. VIVA LA REPUBLICA!"
:: the "opening" on Ireland SCW.
:: Bob Doyle's full speech on Ireland SCW.
:: Bob Doyle obituary.
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Guernica, a community mural: Belfast 2007
The mural wall in West Belfast has a series of painted murals commemorating people and events, linking the past to the present in the struggle for freedom.
A community arts project the central mural is a full size replica of Picasso's mural Guernica. Alongside is another mural with the colours of the Spanish flag in the background, commemorating the men from Ireland - there were over 300, with some 78 from the North - who joined the International Brigades to support the Republic in Spain.
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Making the Belfast mural...
Katie Keenan who was involved in the mural project in Belfast, took photographs of the works, showing the drawing and painting and how passers-by became involved and joined in.
:: See Katie Keenan photo series on Flickr
This photo series replicates for the Belfast mural the series of photographs made by Dora Marr of the stages in the painting of PIcasso's original. One big difference Maar's photographs reveal, something of Picasso's image-making process. The Belfast photographs record a very traditional copying process using squaring up; but for all that, it is still a fascinating view.
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GUERNICA ~ 'TOWN DESTROYED IN AIR ATTACK' ~ 1937
Guernica, the ancient capital of the Basque region, was destroyed on 26th April 1937. This is part of the most (re)published report of the bombing of Guernica. It was written by George L. Steer and published in the London Times on April 28, 1937. Steer was called a "special correspondent" in today's terminology, an 'embedded journalist'.
"Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the center of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of this open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes consisting of three German types, Junkers and Heinkel bombers and Heinkel fighters, did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000lb. downwards and, it is calculated, more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the center of the town to machine-gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields. ....
At 2 a.m. today when I visited the town the whole of it was a horrible sight, flaming from end to end. The reflection of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the mountains from 10 miles away. Throughout the night houses were falling until the streets became long heaps of red impenetrable debris."
:: Read the Times 28th April 1937 report complete
There has been a great deal of argument about who bombed Guernica and how it happened and why in press and propaganda reports and in subsequent histories. However, the attempts to say that it was carried out by the Basques themselves or to vindicate the bombing by saying it was specifically for a military purpose have been discredited; it was directly, mass-bombing for the strategy of fear - total war - on the whole population.
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'Guernica': Being the Official Report of a Commission Appointed by the Spanish Nationalist Government to investigate the causes of the Destruction of Guernica on April 26 -28, 1937.
This is an English translation of the report which was published in 1938 the year following the original report which was published September 1937 - or "Second Year of Triumph" as the report calls it. The translation has a forward by a National Conservative MP, Sir Arnold Wilson which cites and questions Steer's newspaper reports and accepts the National Government Report's findings that, "the greater part of the destruction worked in Guernica was the deliberate work of retreating forces, and that part, if any, [being] the result of air-raid ..." He concludes that we need not fear propaganda (he uses the term 'ex parte') provided that "that we retain our ability to analyse, to judge and, when need arises, to revise our judgements...". See 'Searchlight on Spain' below.
The report contains (selected) witness reports - i["sworn declarations" - and 24 black and white photographs. It claims that the destruction was the result of i["Red militiamen"] setting fires as part of the Basque evacuation of the town and that i["... no signs are visible of the explosion of any ariel bombs within the town."]
Sir Arnold Wilson died in action in WW2, one of the few British MPs to do so, in 1940, over the Dunkirk area having joined up as a rear gunner at the age of 55 not wishing, i["to 'shelter behind the bodies of young men'].
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Civilian bombing
Guernica is sometimes described as "the first mass-bombing of a civilian target", not so; the first bombing was by an Italian aeroplane over Libya in 1911. The British Pathe archive has newsfilm of British planes bombing civilian targets in Iraq in 1920s (targets = villages) as part of the apparatus of colonial power. In 1935/6 the Italian airforce bombed Abyssinia and Japan bombed China.
:: History of ariel bombing: Airminded's excellent 'Chronology of Bombing'
Mussolini ordered his troops and airforce to attack and annex Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia) in 1935. The Italian airforce dropped mustard gas bombs on the Abyssinian army and on civilian populations. At this time Abyssinia was one the few independent states in Africa and had joined the League of Nations. One of the reporters who witnessed and reported on this aggression was George L. Steer who, a year later, was to write about the bombing of Guernica. The Italian experience in Abyssinia became a 'training ground' for what they did in Spain, just as Spain became a training ground for the countries of the fascist axis for the second world war. An Italian Colonel said that the airforce "had to inflict upon the enemy attacks of a terrifying nature to which he can in no way react'. (See 'Telegram from Guernica', Rankin, London 2003. pp45.)
:: Newspaper Report, Guardian, 3rd October 1935
:: More on the bombing of Abyssinia in Shapesoftime article Abyssinia and the Stone Bomb Memorial
:: For schools Italy-Abyssinia conflict 1935-1936.
:: Theory of Bombing. Written for schools by Alf Wilkinson this article covers the development of bombing and air power between the two world wars.
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The demonstrations of technological power through bombing and gassing led to an unsettled feeling and a dread of what might happen during the 1930's if there was a European War. The indiscriminate nature of aerial bombing was well understood and imagined:
"... the horror of mangled bodies, entrails protruding, heads, arms, legs blown off, faces half gone, blood and human remains desecrating the soil. We must not assent to this merciless destruction of men, women, children and animals.” (Countess Warwick, 1936: see Patrick Wright article)
Not that everyone was simply reacting to what was going on - many people had a clear idea of the consequences should such warfare be extended: "The powers of Science have given aerial war a capacity of devastation and destruction without parallel in the history of mankind ...[and people were] ... made more fully alive to this danger,” (Countess of Warwick, UK - see Patrick Wright article - link in acknowledgements at foot of page - In Britain by 1937, well before the outbreak of war, every Local Council had been instructed to take precautions to protect its citizens from ariel bombing.
:: The British Pathe achive has films of anti-gas and anti-bombing prepartions in Britain and France.
In Spain German and Italian planes supported Franco and were used in the battles for Madrid and Barcelona. In Northern Spain the the Basque and Asturias regions, both Republican strongholds, were cut off from the rest of Republican Spain. The Condor Legion began a strategy of blanket bombing of soft targets. First on Durango and then a few weeks later on Guernica.
Although not the first defenceless town to suffer Guernica became the focus of international public attention and a signal of the dread of 'technological warfare' that had been felt for years turning to actuality. This was the first time a West European power - i.e. a 'white', 'civilised' power - used its technology to bomb another West European - i.e. 'white', 'civilised' - population. Spain was also the first time that Europeans saw the result of such bombing through newsreel footage and news photographs in.more of less, real (i.e. 'newsreal') time ...
:: A short film of the C.D.Lewis 1936 poem 'Newsreel' captures the feelings of time to both technological warfare and media very well. See the film online ... Newsreel
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The first photographic war
The Spanish Civil War is sometimes described as "the first photographic war" not meaning the first war to be covered by the press or, even, the first to have photographs taken of it - but the first war with "embedded reporters" sending back stories, photographs and film for wide-spread distrbution in more or less real time from the front - the point of action.
1936 was a time of newspapers, radio and newsreels - in the pre-television period millions went to the cinema each week where they saw the newsreels - their view of the world; many houses had radios; if you didn't buy a newspaper you could, in countries like the UK go to the local public library, as many working people did, to keep up with the news. There was also the photo magazines - Life, Picture Post, Vu, Regards and in Germany Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (BIZ), which gave room for double page photo spreads and showed the work of photo-journalists like Robert Capa and Gerda Taro. It was Capa who said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough" - a dictum that has underpinned media coverage of events ever since; though in todays digital-real-time age "..if you're not quick enough.." might also be added.
On the same evening after the bombing of Guernica a group of reporters drove to the town and began interviewing survivors and sending back reports. By the following afternoon, 27th April, the London 'Evening News' carried a headline 'The Most Apalling Air Raid Ever Known' while Steer's famous report appeared in the London Times and the New York Times on 28th April, before being syndicated worldwide.
On the 29th April, just two days after the bombing, in Paris, L'Humanite carried it's own story, under the headline, MILLE BOMBES INCENDARIES lancees par les avions de Hitler et de Mussolini' accompanied by photographs of the devastated town and pictures of the dead. Though he would certainly have read and seen photographs of the earlier bombing of Madrid, it was probably these news reports and photographs of Guernica that Picasso reacted to.
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Beyond the headlines: the impact of books ...
The 1930's was an age of public meetings, leaflets and posters and it saw the birth of the popular mass-produced, buy-anywhere, non-fiction paperbacks. As well as bookshops they were distributed through outlets such as the newsagents at railway stations ( a similar move to that in the 1990s when supermarkets started selling top 20 novels). These new-style books served the thirst for news and commentary.
Publishers like Victor Gollancz ('Gollancz' and 'Left Book Club')and Allen Lane ('Penguin') published books because they believed, in Lane's words, that in the UK there was "a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price." Penguin paperbacks were launched in 1935 priced sixpence each and by 1938 were publishing Penguin Specials - books in bright red covers - which gave in-depth coverage of political issues of the day. The journalist G. T. Garratt noted, in words as apposite today as when he wrote them in 1938, that the consequence of lack of information to the public was that, "Democracy will fail, and deserve to fail unless those people in Western Europe and America, who still have the free use of their intelligence, will insist on being told the truth by their rulers, ... He also alleged that Britain's foreign policies were being dicated by pro-fascists in 'high places'.
'Mussolini's Roman Empire' by G. T. Garratt was published in 1938 as the second Penguin Special. Garratt was a journalist who had worked for the 'Manchester Guardian' and reported for them on the Abyssinian War - see Abyssinia 1935 - and he had also spent considerable time in Spain. One chapter of his book is called 'The Basque Tragedy' and deals with the bombing of Guernica. The final chapter 'England's Betrayal' sets out a case against British Government's policy of non-intervention: " [England's] sudden collapse in front of Italian aggression has left millions of people in Europe and the Near East bewildered and uncertain."
:: Internet Archive has an online copy. Scroll down the big list of html links on left and choose the DjVu viewer. Click and give it a few seconds to download. Mussolini's Roman Empire
Geoffrey Theodore Garratt (1888–1942) was an administrator, author, journalist and Labour activist. He worked as an administrator in India and supported the cause of Indian independence; in 1934 he co-wrote 'The Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India' - the first English account understanding the Indian nationalist movement on its own terms. He stood for parliament as a Labour candiate 4 times, failing on each occasion. He covered the Abyssinian war and saw Britain's raising of sanctions against Italy as "a lunacy". In 1937 he was in Spain organizing relief for the besieged Madrid - food in and evacuating children out. In May 1937 he stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate in Plymouth attacking ‘Eden and his foul and fascist foreign office’ but was reprimanded by the Labour Party for having said too much about Spain. He became a leading member of 'National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief' being temporary secretary for a while. Although over 50 years old, he joined, 'The Pioneer Corps' in WW2 and became a Major in charge of a group of German volunteers repairing bomb damage, first in London, then later to the 'Defensible Barracks, Pembroke Dock'.
GT Garratt was killed in 1942 by an accidential bomb explosion in Pembroke Barracks on 28 April 1942 ‘from multiple injuries accidentally sustained through the explosion of a beach mine during a military lecture’ Garratt was one of 18 people killed by the accident, including three German Jewish volunterers from the Pioneer Corps. Marion James - aka 'abstract_effects' on Flickr - has a photograph of the grave stones in the military cemetery at Pembroke Dock along with a list of names of the dead men.
:: Reference: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, quoting death certificate and letters.
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Searchlight on Spain ...
The Duchess of Atholl was a Scottish Unionist MP who opposed British non-intervention in Abyssinia and who later resigned her seat as an MP in protest against the British government's policy of appeasment to Hitler.
She vsitied Spain with Eleanor Rathbone and Ellen Wilkinson as a fact-finding group in April 1937. She wrote 'Searchlight on Spain', dedicated 'To All Those Spaniards Who Are Fighting or Toiling for National Independence and Democratic Government Against Tremendous Odds'
The book was pubished in June 1938 and sold out the first print run of 100,000 copies within a single week - that's faster than any book today. The public wanted, not only the news of Spain, but also the fullest background information it could get. The book refutes the claims of Nationalist Commission's report and Arnold Wilson's challenge (see above) by applying logical analysis point by point with an almost surgical precision to substaniate the truth of the ariel bombing and take apart the myths of self-inflicted damage.
The Duchess of Atholl - 1874-1960 - real name Katharine Ramsay - was Chairman of the 'National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief' and was one of a small group of people who worked for Picasso's 'Guernica' painting to be brought to Britain to help raise funds for Spanish refugees and to support the International Brigades.
:: About Duchess of Atholl - Spartacus.
:: About Duchess of Atholl - Wikipedia.
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Picasso's painting of 'Guernica'.
“ The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death.
:: Read about Picasso's satrical etchings drawn to illustrate his poem The Dream and Lie of Franco.
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Guernica: size and impact
Picasso's painting Guernica is 3.5 metre (11 ft) tall and 7.8 metre (25.6 ft) wide - measure it out on a wall.
The figures are larger than life-size and you would have to be some distance back from it to see it as a whole as you can in a book illustration or on a computer screen. For the real thing you see parts of it and have to move your eyes up and down and along and back to take in how the parts and the images and the painters lines and areas of tone relate to each other- quite a kinaesthetic experience.
Many artists and people have recorded the impact that Guernica had on them when they first encountered it. Lee Krasner said "Picasso’s Guernica floored me. When I saw it first at the Dudensing Gallery (in New York), I rushed out, walked about the block three times before coming back to look at it. And later I used to go to the Modern every day to see it."
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Black and White and Grey...
Why did Picasso paint his most famous painting in black and white?
The huge mural shows the effects of the bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War on 26th April 1937. Picasso was in Paris preparing to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion of the International exhibition when news of the bombing of Guernica broke as a text story by the Times reporter George L Steer, 28th April 1937, – photographs arrived later. Picasso began work on 1 May and completed Guernica about 5 June - 5 weeks later. In a period of intense activity he produced the amazing, searing image of ‘Guernica’ and scores of drawings and sketches.
During the painting of Guernica Picasso's partner-of-the-time, Dora Maar, a young Yugoslavian photographer, recorded the stages of the painting and revealing some of the changes that Picasso made as he worked intensley for a month. Witnessed and documented in black and white Dora Maar's photographs provide one of the most complete records of the emergence of a great work of art ever made. Though, as with many witness accounts, it reveals little in the way of meaning, but rather presents a succession of new realities. The French film director, Jean-Luc Godard, said that 'film is not the representation of reality, it is the reality of the representation'.
The use of black and white makes a direct reference to photography and newspaper reports - with black and white giving the painting the authority of a photograph. Newsfilms - all in black and white - from Spain were widely seen at the time the British poet Stephen Spender made the connection between Picasso's "flickering black, white and grey” forms and film, however, he also noted that "Guernica is in no sense reportage” of something that Picasso had experienced but rather “the picture of a horror reported in the newspapers”.
The way Picasso arranged black, grey and white shapes across the canvas creates, positive and negative aspects - almost a strobe-like effect of light as produced briefly by explosions.
Picasso stayed in his studio in Paris during the occupation of the second world war. During this period he continued working including the bronze sculpture 'Death's Head'(1943). When a German soldier visiting his studio pointed to a photograph of the Guernica painting and said "Did you do this?" Picasso gave the ledgendary reply "No. You did."
:: about Dora Marr ..... :: About Picasso painting the mural. ..... :: Large size image of Guernica.
:: Rare photos from the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris of the Spanish Pavilion showing Picasso posing in front of Guernica. An ariel photograph shows with devastating objectivity the small Spanish Pavilion sitting in the shadow of the huge edifice of the German pavilion which is in turn opposite the towering Russian pavilion. See Spanish Pavilion 1937 (La Cucaracha is a wonderous website - great respect!)
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... a mother and her child ...
The mother figure cries out as she cradles her dead child. This central image references the dead Christ lyng on his Mother Mary and the many paintings of The Massacre of the Innocents.
There was a Spanish tradition (now prohibited) for mothers to be photographed with a dead child held as though asleep in their arms.
Picasso's image was used on this silver medal struck for the 50th anniversary.
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This image of a woman carrying a baby and running away from bombing. It is a news film and this shot is preceded and followed by overhead shots in close-up of dead children and a dead woman with a dead baby on her chest. What responsibilities do we have in the use of such an image? Dare we show such an image? Dare we hide it?
There was a Spanish tradition (now prohibited) for mothers to be photographed with a dead child held as though asleep in their arms.
At the time images of dead children laid out as their bodies ere collected up were shown in newspapers and used in posters. Recently The Manic Street Preachers used one of these images on their CD cover about their song...If you tolerate this (...your children wil be next...)
The original news film, which is finely crafted in its camerawork and editing, is in the British Pathe archive; Film ID 534.16 entitled '(Bombing Madrid).
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Patti Smith: Guernica poem
Patti Smith, punkadollic poet and singer, wrote a poem about Picasso's Guernica for the 70th anniversary of the bombing in which she refers to the "black and white blood" and describes the mother and child:
"She crawled with her babe limp as a doll in floral crayon
fleeing hell straight into the light of her ancestors..."
"She crept into the belly of a fallen horse
drawing its life into her mouth
covering her doll with kisses..."
:: Read the poem on Patti Smith's website .... she's on My Space too myspace pattismith
:: Joan Baez recorded a reading of the poem 'Guernica' by American writer Norman Rosten in 1968, though the imagery seems to be based on photographs from Madrid. - same as referred to by Manic Street Preachers in their song/album 'If You Tolerate This'.
In Guernica the dead children were layed out in order on the sidewalk
In their white starched dresses
In their pitiful white dresses...
:: Lyrics and Discography
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Picasso said...
"...Art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things one must steal, to be used against the established order...If art is ever given the keys to the city, it will be because it' been so watered down, rendered so impotent, that it's not worth fighting for."
Picasso, letter to D.H. Khanweiler; quoted Henbergen, page 179.
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Silent screams.....
Picasso wrote in 1937 - as part of 'The Dream and Lie of Franco' - a poem with these words, “...cries of children cries of women cries of birds cries of flowers cries of timbers and of stones cries of bricks cries of furniture...” Have you spotted the bird in the painting yet?
How do we feel or hear the agony of a silent scream? How does that work? ...the horse in Guernica... the women... OR... could it be that we are deaf to their cries?
SOME OTHER SILENT SCREAMS
:: Nicholas Pousssin, ''Massacre of the Innocents'' (1630-31), shows a child being torn away from it's screaming mother. This painting was known to both Picasso and Francis Bacon. Bacon described it as "'probably the best human cry in painting"
:: Edvard Munch 1893, ‘The Scream’
:: Sergei Eisenstein - the screaming Nurse from his 1925 black and white silent film ‘Battleship Potemkin’. ... In the film there is also a shot of a pram with an infant inside trundling on its own down the Odessa Steps - the child is crying, mouth wide open. Aleksandr Rodchenko, a colleague of Eisenstein, used a still image of the screaming child in the pram in his design for a poster for the film. See image at Tate or search 'Rodchenko Potemkin poster'.
:: Francis Bacon, 1944 - the screaming 'being' on the right hand panel of his triptych 'Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion'.
:: Francis Bacon, 1953 - the painting montage (="mash-up") of the screaming nurse from the film Battleship Potemkin and the Spanish painter Velázquez's 'Portrait of Pope Innocent X' of 1650 often called the Screaming Pope
:: John Filo, black and white photographs of the Kent State University shootings of 1970. A close up of the injured students body of the same events from tv coverage was made into a screen print called 'Kent State by the British artist Richard Hamilton
:: 'Scream' the 1996 film by Wes Graven has a killer with a mask based on Munch's 'Scream' painting...in this case while the mask mouth is wide open, it is the victims that scream. One of the most famous screams in cinema is in the shower sequence of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) - with sound in the film - but how often do we see it as a still or a poster in silent scream mode? Janet Leigh's silent scream ... photographs are - theoretically - snap shots, instants; can sound exist without time?
and ...
... this from the Mahabharata "Everywhere I look, in all directions, countless bodies/ lolling in abandon, mouths gaping as if/their final cry should be still audible." (from, 'Modern Poetry in Translation', no 12)
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'Echo of a Scream': David Siqueiros, 1937
Painted in 1937 in response to the Spanish Civil War David Siqueiros's painting 'Echo of a Scream' shows the twisted metal and devastation created by modern bombing - references not used by Picasso - and a central double-image of a crying child - possibly drawn from newsreels - creating the paradox of depicting a noise in the silent medium of painting. Siqueros was one of the group of Mexican artists called the "muralists".
:: 'Echo of a Scream' at MOMA.
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Versions of 'Guernica' ....
Many versions of Picasso's 'Guernica' have been created...sometimes as replicas...sometimes to carry a further political or social point.
The Tile Version' stands in the open air in the town of Guernica itself.
Photo; Richard Thorpe
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Tapestries of Picasso's "Guernica" and the UN tapestry
Three tapestry versions of Guernica were made in Paris by Jacqueline de la Baume Dürrbach of the Dürrbach Atelier in 1955 in collaboration with Picasso. As well as the brown one at the UN in New York, there is a sliver/grey one in the Museum of Colmar Unterlinden, Alsace in France (made in 1976) and a red one in the Museum of Modern Art Gunma, in Japan (made in 1985). During a long period of collaboration, Dürrbach made tapestries - always in editons' of three - of many of Picasso's paintings.
:: small image of the grey one - no image of the red one yet :-(
The UN tapestry version was made in shades of brown and beige ("taupe") and is displayed just outside the the Security Council Chamber. Then-Governor. Nelson Rockefeller bought the "Guernica" tapestry for the New York statehouse in Albany.
In1985, when Picasso's painting left the Rockefeller-created Museum of Modern Art for its present home in Madrid, Rockefeller'ss widow put the tapestry on permanent loan to the U.N. (An earlier Rockefeller had put up the money to buy the U.N.'s site.) The tapestry has been there through every warring catastrophe since, from Rwanda to Bosnia to Iraq. It is now on loan to the Whitechapel Gallery in London for a year - 2009/2010 -while the UN is being re-furbished.
Photo: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe - with permisson
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Picasso in British Pathe
This newsreel shows Picasso attending a Peace Conference in Sheffield in 1950. It is quite an in-depth report - useful for older students and for getting a feel for the politics of the fifties.
:: PEACE GETS A MOVE ON 16/11/1950 Film ID 1500.24
For an introduction to Picasso try:
:: PICASSO 80 NOT OUT 02/11/196 1740.08
Pablo Picasso celebrates his 80th birthday in the village of Vallauris, South of France.
:: PICASSO EXHIBITION 07/07/1960 1684.25
An exhibition of Pablo Picasso's paintings on display at the Tate Gallery, London, 1960.
There are about 20 news reel items about Picasso in the Archive altogether.
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Picasso and the Dove of Peace
Picasso was involved with many peace initiatives in Europe and the USA and had a long assocation with the United Nations.
A lithograph of a white dove by Picasso was used as the image for the posters for the International Peace Congress in Paris in 1949, which probably led to it's widespread use by peace groups ever since. Picasso's image is no graphic emblem - just a drawing of a dove in all its intractable reality - symbols arise from realities.
:: Time magazine tells the story
:: peace dove photo at Israelli-Egyptian peace talks 1977
In Guernica a bird is shown standing on a roof, its neck stretched upwards, it's beak wide open in another silent scream
The story of the flood which threatened to engulf all living things is very ancient and both the Bible and the Qur'an tell of birds being used to test the recession of the waters and the re-appearance of dry land . The olive branch which the dove returns with in it's beak in the Bible story is an ancient symbol of peace going back, at least, to the ancient Greek myths.
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On the Road...
Picasso stipulated that Guernica should not be returned to Sapin until it again became a republic and "public liberties and democratic institutions" were in place. This did not occur until after his own death in 1973 and that of Franco in 1975. Guernica travelled to several countries eventually returning to Spain in 1981.
Debate continues as whether Guernica should stay in b{Madrid] or be moved to Guernica the centre of Basque regional identity.
:: Should Picasso's painting be in Guernica or Madrid? ..... :: Well, should it?
GUERNICA'S TRAVELS
:: Paris Picasso's studio; May/June 1937.
:: Paris the world Exhibition; July 1937
:: Norway, Sweden, Denmark 1937.
:: France 1938.
:: England - Oxford & Leeds (just the studies); London and Manchester, to raise funds for the Republcan cause. 1938/39.
:: France 1939.
:: New York 1939. Sent to New York to raise funds for the raise funds and support for Spanish refugees at Picasso's request, after Franco's victory in Spain. It travelled around the USA before settling in MOMA until 1981
:: 1953-1956: Guernica travels to Brazil and returns to Europe - Milan, Paris, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Brussels, Amsterdam and Stockholm - then back to MOMA in New York for the Picasso retrospective celebrating the artist's 75th birthday.
:: Picasso dies 1973
:: Franco dies 1975.
:: Democratic constitution adopted in Spain.
:: Madrid 1981 - Guernica returned to Spain, until the present....though it has moved from the Prado to it's present home in the National Museum "Centro de Arte Reina Sofía", also in Madrid, in 1992.
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Guernica in England and at the Whitechapel Gallery
In 1938, an exhibition of the studies for Guernica, including the 'Weeping Woman' was held in Oxford in Oct/Nov and then in Leeds in December. The painting itself was displayed in the New Burlington Galleries in London's West End. At the same time, in an adjacent gallery, an exhibition of painings by Spanish artists, such as Ignacio Zuloaga - a Franco favourite - who presented a conservative view of Spain was mounted by those who supported Franco.
In January 1939 Guernica and the studies were exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery on the edge of London's East End. Clement Atlee, later to be Prime Minister, a supporter of the International Brigades in whose honour one of the companies in the British Battalion, 'Major Attlee Company', was named, gave the opening address; "If once Fascism gets hold, the people who will suffer most will b the young." In February Guernica was exhibited in Manchester in a car showroom for a short while, before it was returned to France and from there to the USA where it stayed for 42 years, until after the death of Franco.
All the exhibitions were used to raise support for the Republican cause. "...ranks of working men's boots were left ex votos (like offerings) at the painting's base: the price of admission was a pair of boots, in a fit state to be sent to the Spanish front."( van Hensbergen, p.94.) Giving away something as precious as a good pair of boots was a huge sacrifice to offer - yet thousands in the East End of London did. Jack Jones, an International Brigade volunteer, relates how he took his Territorial Army boots with him and was the only person in his group with real shoes; in Spain boots really mattered.
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"Kill Lies All"
In 1974, during the Vietnam War, a protester Tony Shafrazi spray-painted Guernica with the words "KILL LIES ALL". The paint was easily removed as the painting was heavily varnished. Shafrazi was protesting about Richard Nixon's commuting the sentence of Wiliam Calley for his part in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
Tony Shafrazi is now a gallery owner - showing Picassos... In regard to his 1974 attack on Guernica, he gave the following statement to 'Art in America' in December of 1980:
“ I wanted to bring the art absolutely up to date, to retrieve it from art history and give it life. Maybe that's why the Guernica action remains so difficult to deal with. I tried to trespass beyond that invisible barrier that no one is allowed to cross; I wanted to dwell within the act of the painting's creation, get involved with the making of the work, put my hand within it and by that act encourage the individual viewer to challenge it, deal with it and thus see it in its dynamic raw state as it was being made, not as a piece of history.
Felix Gmelin, another artist, created a work in 1996 based on Shafrazi's defacement of Picasso's painting. See Gmelin's painting... ... Read Gmelin's rationale...
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A blue day at the UN
When Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared at the United Nations on Wednesday, February 5, 2003 to argue that Iraq had not complied with UN demands to disarm and posed an imminent threat, UN officials draped a blue cloth over Picasso's 'Guernica' .
Check out the news stories and views on this...Picasso's new blue period.
:: Story 1 - Artist's Network.
:: Story 2 - Weekly Standard.
Some say this was just to make a plain background for the press camera operators, others that The White House couldn't risk the inherent criticism of the painting set against what they were proposing. Some say it was embarassing for the Sectretary of State's head to be seen in front of a horse's bare bum; though it didn't get covered up for anyone else?
Blue - as in chroma key - is the colour used in television and film to project backgrounds onto behind presenters and actors; so take the opportunity to do some telepathic projection of your own; what image or visual metaphor would you put there? Or alternatively, if you had a blue cloth what would you cover up?
The UN flag is white on a light blue ground; blue was chosen as it was considerd the opposite of red, the colour of war. The emblem of the two olive branches was chosen to represent peace - white is a colour associated with spirituality and purity and with peace in many religions and cultures.
Some more artist uses of "immaterial" blue....
Kandinsky - one of the founders of abstract art - published a theory of colour in his book Über das Geistige in der Kunst' (= 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art') - 1911. Blue is described as, "deep, inner, supernatural, peaceful ... Sinking towards black, it has the overtone of a mourning that is not human... a typical heavenly color.”
Yves Klein, a French artist, patented his own deep blue pigment in the 1950's - International Klein Blue or IKB - which he saw as an "open window to freedom, as the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of color." . Examples at Tate Modern in London and at Moma in New York.
:: Richard Hamilton's 1974 screenprint of an injured student at Kent Sate University based on a photograph from the tv coverage is made up of multiple layers; the bottom layer is plain blue. (see Silent Scream - section above)
:: Derek Jarman made a film called 'Blue' in 1993 - shortly before his death and at a time when he was partially blind. The film is a single shot of saturated blue filling the screen with an accompanying soundtrack of voices describing his life and vision; "For our time is the passing of a shadow,/And our lives will run like/Sparks through the stubble."
:: extract of Derek Jarman's 'Blue' on You Tube. (but it has subtitles - aaacchh!)
:: Wikipedia entry on Derek Jarman's 'Blue' (A bit short but you'll get the idea.)
But! ... isn't this getting a bit far from Picasso's 'Guernica'? well, maybe so, but, The first six drawings by Picasso for 'Guernica' were made in pencil on blue paper.
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Continuing protests ...
Since it was first seen in 1936, Picasso's 'Guernica' has been used as a focus for protests of many types and in many parts of the world. The post-cubist style and the characterisations used by Picasso lend themselves to reproduction as posters, graphics, animations and in dance and performance.
In this photograph, from Brooklyn, building site hoardings have two of the 'characters' painted on the sky blue ground. Perhaps there had ben a fuller representation somewhere else and the boards had been moved to a new location shuffling the image? Is this sky blue, UN blue or a brand colour like IKEA? See protest against an IKEA development. Or could it be connected to John Unger's proposal for "an open-source art project" called American Guernica.
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Who's saying what? Examples of protest ...
Examples of Picasso's 'Guernica' in use by protestors:
:: article with several protest examples - USA, Iraq, etc.
:: protest in Kolkata, India...14 November 2007
:: Fallujah, Iraq
:: No War in Iraq, USA
:: protest blog including cut-out placards based on Guernica.
:: Hold your protest in front of Guernica
:: 'Belaruzian Waltz' school lesson material on art and protest based on Belarus, USA, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
:: John Beger - Lebanon bombing by writer and art critic John Berger. Berger wrote a famous critique, 'The Success and Failure of Picasso', in 1965.
:: Visual Resistence 'snuck in' to create a mural in the Whitney, 2006 - helped by Deep Dish.
Photo: 'United for Peace demonstration New York, March 2007. Thanks to Nick Calyx, Flickr
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Cartoons
Picasso's 'Guernica' has been a 'gift' and a 'challenge' for cartoonists since its first appearance in 1937. The British Cartoon Archive at University of Kent has examples from David Low's first un-Picasso influenced reactions to the bombing in 1937 - perhaps based on newspaper photographs and news film and reminiscent of 'ruins' iconography after the First World War to a Michael Heath cartoon, "Serbinica", of 1993.
:: David Low Evening Standard, 08 May 1937: Bombing of Guernica, May 1937
:: David Low Evening Standard, 21 Jun 1937: Franco and Guernica, June 1937
:: Vicky (aka Victor Weisz), Evening Standard, 25 Feb 1960: Franco
:: Jak (aka Raymond Jackson), Evening Standard, 10 Oct 1969: Gibraltar crisis
:: Paul Rigby The Sun, 26 Oct 1971:Picasso's 90th birthday with 'Weeping Woman' and characters fom Guernica.
:: Paul Rigby The Sun, 10 Apr 1973: Death of Picasso; 1973
:: Nicholas Garland Daily Telegraph, 11 Sep 1981: Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, 1981.
:: George Gale Daily Telegraph, 22 Mar 1988: West Belfast, 1988
:: Michael Heath Independent, 08 Apr 1993: 'Guernica twinned with Serbinica' - Serbia 1993.
:: Search the British Cartoon Archive and marvel at the diversity of works and their acute view of the events of the times. Free to look or show in the classroom - and there is a zoom tool fo closer looking. There is a charge for downloading and re-use of high resolution materials for education or commercial use. Group of 'Guernica'-related cartoons on British Cartoon Archive wesbite - this is a new feature of great help to students, teachers and researchers
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Eduardo Chillida: The Guernica memorial
Eduardo Chillida, the great Spanish sculptor, created a large memorial for the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing that stands near the town centre in the Pueblos de Europa park. Into the heavy concrete structure an organic shaped hole as been cutout - foliage? cloud? bomb blast? - something missing but ever-present, through which other trees can be seen. The sculpture is called 'Gure aitaren etxea' (“Our father’s house”).
The 'Gernikako Aretexa' 'Tree of Gernika' was the mythic symbol under which the ancient parliament met and is the symbolic centre of Basque regionalism and nationalism.
Photo: Guernica 50th anniversary memorial Eduardo Chillida; Flickr PD
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Henry Moore: 'Large Figure in a Shelter'.
Henry Moore's large bronze sulpture is also in the Pueblos de Europa park near to Chillida's sculpture 'Our Father's House'.
'Large Figure in a Shelter' is a very large, bronze sculpture. It is one of Henry Moore's last works completed after his death. It takes on some of his recurring themes - the helmet and a living form within a larger sheltering form.
:: Henry Moore, English sculptor, 1898 - 1986. See Henry Moore foundation
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
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David Smith: 'Medals of Dishonor'
David Smith the great American sculptor of the post-war period made a series of 15 bronze reliefs which he called Medals of Dishonor'. They were made over a three-year period - 1938 to1940 - in response to events in Europe, the rise of fascism and the Spanish Civil War. As a sustained creative response to the causes and effects of war the series remains breath-taking and challenging today, 70 years later.
To develop his images he drew on ancient Sumerian seals and German medals from the First World War that he had seen in the British Museum as well as the work of artists such as Bosch, Brueghel and Goya and Picasso's 'Guernica' to form the 'imagery' within each 'medal'. As well as responding to the effects of the war Smith revealed the underlying forces behind 'modern war' - exemplified at the time by the blanket bombing of Guernica.
A list of the titles shows the clarity and prescience of Smith's vision: Propaganda for War; The Fourth Estate (the news media); Munition Makers; Diplomats: Fascist and Fascist Tending; Private Law and Order Leagues; War Exempt Sons of the Rich; Cooperation of the Clergy; Death by Gas; Bombing Civilian Populations; Sinking Hospital and Civilain Refugee Ships; Death by Bacteria; Reaction in Medicine; Elements Which Cause Prostitution; Food Trust; and finally, th chilling Scientific Body Disposal. It was a set of themes that applies to conflict around the globe ever since Smith created them.
:: Tate Modern has a good page on the medals with excellent images (click to enlarge the thumbnails).
Tate Modern, 'Medals of Dishonor'
:: David Smith estate - authoritative detailed information.
:: Another sort of medal of dishonour mentioning 'Guernica' is the cartoon, The Other Side of the Medal - by Sidney 'George' Strube Daily Express, 29 June 1943 - showing the effects of Nazi bombing across Europe.
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The impact of Picasso's 'Guernica' on USA art - 1939
The Spanish Civil War was widely reported in the USA and many artists were deeply affected it by it and the growing threat of another European war.
:: Phillip Guston: 'Bombardment' 1938.
:: David Smith: 'Medals of Dishonor' 1938-1940.
:: Robert Motherwell: 'Elegy for the Spanish Republic'. The title of a series of 150 works begun in 1948.
:: Willem de Kooning: 'Asheville' 1948
:: Arshiele Gorky: "The Betrothal 1946/47, series of paintings and drawings.
:: Anton Refregier: 'Guernica' - Refregier was one of the socialist realist painters ("ashcan school").
:: Lee Krasner: " it floored me ... I rushed out, walked about the block three times before coming back to look at it.
Guernica's appearance in New York had a profound effect on Jackson Pollock who used to visit it regularly. When Guernica was moved from New York back to Spain in 1981, it was Jackson Pollock's huge creation 'Number 1", 1948 which was hung in the same area as Guernica had been in the Musuem of Modern Art (MOMA).
Over 2,800 men and women from USA joined the International Brigades - Abraham Lincoln and Washington Brigades - and the medical services.
:: About the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Image: 'Bombardment' by Phillip Guston, 1938. Photo: Wally G. Flickr. Creative Commons: BY-NC-ND
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'Guernica': Film by Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens, 1950
The French film-maker's 1950 response to Guernica and the art of Picasso. It shows stills in black and white of Guernica after the bombing and Picasso's paintings from 1902 until 1949. Shows how other work such as the Minatour and Weeping Women images relate to Guernica. There is a long sequence in Part 2 in which the camera gropes about in the dark to track over sections of some of Picasso's sculpture - inc. 'El Hombre del Cordero', 1943.
The script is by the French poet Paul Éluard and read by María Casarès & Jacques Pruvost. Outstanding music soundtrack by Guy Bernard in modern-classical style. The film uses experimental techniques as in Resnais' later films: 'Night and Fog' (about the Holocaust); 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'; 'Last Year in Marienbad', etc.
Guernica. 16mm. black & white; narration in French with Spanish subtitles & English surtitles; 13 mins.
:: 'Guernica', part one - 5 mins 51 secs. ... :: 'Guernica', part two - 7 mins 34 secs
In 1966 Resnais made 'La Guerre est finie' ('The War is Over') in black and white and starring Yves Montand, Ingrid Thulin and Geneviève Bujold is about a Spanish communist activist working against the Franco regime who is haunted by memories and failure.
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Equipo Crónica
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Josep Guinovart: 'Des del Guernica'
Installation by Josep Guinovart, 'Des del Guernica', based on Picasso's Guernica, in the Museu d'Història de Catalunya in Barcelona - temporary exhibition - Spring 2007.
:: Museu d'Història de Catalunya is a wonderful museum, built by the harbour as part of the 1992 Olympics regeneration; it tells the history of Catalonia from pre-historic to modern times - rivetting; don't miss if you visit Barcelona. Museu d'Història de Catalunya website.
'Des del Guernica' by Jesop Guinovart, 2007. Three photos: M.Mateer at Museu d'Història de Catalunya, 2007
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Digital Guernicas
:: Lena Gieseke. A 'flash' film - it takes time to download...don't keep clicking...give it time. Guernica in 3-D
:: About the making of 'Guernica in 3-D'. About 'Guernica in 3-D
:: Vancouver Film School graduate Marcelo Ortiz through the VFS 3D Animation & Visual Effects program
3-D animation
:: Bagdad Rap-Gernika-Irak. Animations of Picasso's Guernica followed by montage of archive stills from Spain 1936-39 and Iraq. Duration: 01:46 Recorded: 15 April 2007 in Spain. Bagdad Rap-Gernika-Irak
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Sophie Matisse does Guernica
Matisse's grandaughter, Sophie Matisse, created a version of Guernica in 2003, using its original greys (grisaille) as an underpainting for vivid colour. She also used Guernica-like techniques to respond to the 9/11 atrocities in New York, events which she had witnessed.
:: Sophie Matisse 'Guernica' and '9/11 Guernica'
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'A Few Bits Like Guernica': Conrad Atkinson
For all the 'noise' and anguish of Picasso's Guernica there is no gore ... no open wounds .... no blood splatters on the ground or the walls - all things we are only to used to seeing in the media most days.
Conrad Atkinson a UK artist created A Few Bits Like Guernica in 2004 using a huge canvas with a grey outline the same size as Guernica. Inside this frame are laid out 'scars' and 'wounds' from european mediaevil and renaissance paintings such as Christ's wound on the cross. He spoke about the paradox of the 'beauty' of 'mutilation'.
Atkinson also makes artworks overlaying new elements onto recreated newspaper pages. In one the frontpage of The New York Times with a colour photo of US troops on patrol is recreated and overlaid with more of the wounds - it is subtitled 'Fallujuernica'. He also turned up one day in Belfast and helped with the Peace Wall version of Guernica (see above).
:: about Conrad Atkinson by his gallery.
:: review of paintings in New York Artworld
:: Conrad Atkinson's own website - seems to stop in 2002.
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X-ray Guernica
X-ray Guernica is an artwork sponsored by 'Absolut Vodka' and given the title 'Absolut Wallpaper'. It is painted as a mural high on a decaying, neo-classical facade in Rome, Italy, but is a temporary display. The site and use brings to mind the poster hoarding scale of Picasso's painting itself. The painting is by Ron English and as well as the x-ray figures includes a collage-style background of USA-referenced newspaper headlines such as the death of President John F. Kennedy (1963), Marlyn Monroe (1963) and the death of Picasso himself in 1973. Newspapers and X-rays are usually black and white like Picasso's original painting. English comments in an interview (link two below) how 'the landscape' has been replaced by branded imagery.
:: More about Ron English. ..... and more about the mural
:: Image is by *29febbraio* from Flickr and has a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.
:: See the original big size image here - nice!
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...some more websites...
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Basque Children
One consequence of the bombing of Guernica was the outpouring of refugees - some 150,000 - fled across the border into France - from the area. Children were put in ships and taken to homes in England. Known as the Basque Children their association is still active today.
:: Basque Children Organisation
:: Basque Children and Spanish Refugees
:: British Pathe archive has a news film.
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Kids' Guernica
Kids' Guernica is a peace project for children through art in different places of the world to create peace paintings on huge canvases the same size as Pablo Picasso's "Guernica", 1937 (3.5 m ~ 7.8m), which protested against the brutality of bombing in the town of Gernika during the Spanish civil war.
The participant children expressed powerful messages of peace with their creativity and imagination, which would contribute to world peace in the 21st century.
:: http://www.kids-guernica.org/ Kids' Guernica website.
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Books? There are hundreds ... here's six very good ones ...
There are hundreds of books about Guernica and Picasso's painting and thousands more in which the bombing and the painting are discussed. They range from straightforward introductions to very detailed studies. Here's few that I have found very useful.
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Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon
Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon' by Gijs van Hensbergen, pub. Bloomsbury, 2004.
Excellent and comprehensive introduction to the events of 1936, the bombing of Guernica, Picasso's response and how the painting has become an icon. The only downside is that being a £8.99 paperback most of the pictures are small and not best quality - especially unhelpful if you are seeing them for the first time; however there is a two page insert of glossy paper for a reasonable reproduction of 'Guernica' and Picasso paintings, 'Weeping Woman' and 'Night Fishing at Antibes'.
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Picasso's Guernica
Picasso's Guernica. edited by Ellen C. Oppler, pub. Norton, 1988.
I like this book which has lots of illustrations and lots of substantial quotes and reprints of whole articles. It is a large softback book with good quality paper and b&w illustrations. I particularly like it as it has the good sense to reprint the whole of Lorca's great 1934 poem, 'Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter' (though best get your own Lorca poems and his essay on the 'Duende' to see exactly what the connections are). The book is outofprint and in the way of things on the Internet secondhand copies go from $50.00 upwards (the "long tail" of supply and demand strikes again).
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Telegram from Guernica
Telegram from Guernica by Nicholas Rankin is a paperback. Faber £8.99
This is the biography of George Steer and tells the story of his coverage of Abyssinia and Guernica as well as his other reporting.
:: There is a short biog on Wikipedia George L Steer
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Guernica: Total War
Guernica: Total War by Ian Patterson; paperback, Profile Books Ltd, 2007, £8.99. Hardback Harvard University Press, £Lots.
Ian Patterson traces this story of obliteration of populations by bombing using Guernica as a focus, but reaching back to earlier atrocities, and then through World War II to Hiroshima, and shows how the image of Guernica is just as relevant today, in the world of 9/11 and Iraq. It's not a work of military history but takes in political debates, psychological consequences and literary representations. Lots of illustrations - cartoons, posters, etc - Read alongside, for instance Bob Doyle's recent speeeches - see Guernica mural opening - the book makes a clear indictment of the ongoing policy of targetting civilian populations for political ends.
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We Saw Spain Die
We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War, by Paul Preston. Constable & Robinson, London 2008. Hardback £20.00.
'We Saw Spain Die' tells the story of the estimated 1,000 journalists who covered the Spanish Civil War. Not just how they saw the events and people but also how they got their stories out , and what happened back at the newspapers offices.
This mini-review added December 2009
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The Tree of Gernika
George L Steer's book, 'The Tree of Gernika', has just been republished in English by Faber. Subtitled 'A Field Study of Modern War' it was originally published in 1938 and contains Steer's reflections on his experiences in Abyssinia and Spain and, in particular, the struggle for survival through the Spanish civil war of Euzkadi, the democratic republic founded by the Basque people.
There is a new introduction by Nicholas Rankin which highlights the personal tragedy Steer carried with him in Spain.
A must read: hurry now!
This mini-review added April 2010
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Ask Professor Zebra
New to 'Guernica' and the Spanish Civil War, the art of Pablo Picasso ... etc. etc]?
Mail your question to Professor Zebra.
Hi! Professor Zebra,........
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...some maps....
Where is Guernica?
Guernica on Google Maps.
Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain
Why sometimes Gernika?
Gernika is the Basque spelling of the name.
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Acknowledgements
:: International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT) www.international-brigades.org.uk
:: International Brigade Commemorative Committee (IBCC)
:: Mark Ervine for the recorded 'conversation'
:: Katie Keenan for the photographs of the murals being painted and background on the Belfast Peace Murals.
:: Cassandra Needham at Whitechapel Gallery, London
:: Goshka Macuga: artist of the Whitechapel installation, 'Nature of the Beast'.
:: United Nations photo library: photo of UN tapestry.
:: Linen Hall Library, Belfast and Ciaran Crossey for access to photograph the medal.
:: Richard Thorpe: photo of the tile 'Guernica'.
:: British Pathe schools licence.
:: Brett Holman of Airminded
:: Marx Memorial Library Marx Memorial Library
:: Patrick Wright. Articles on Abyssian Bomb memorial published through Open Democracy at The Stone Bomb.
:: Nick Calyx, photo of 'United Peace' protest. Nick Calyx on Flickr
:: Wally Gobetz, photo of Phillip Guston's 'Bombardment'... Flickr
:: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - G.T. Garratt bio.
:: National Archives ... National Archives on Flickr Commons
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About and feedback
:: This material about Guernica is written and collated by Marshall Mateer.
First published on 1st November 2007. Last updated April 2010
:: If you have any feedback please contact me at info@shapesoftime.net
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Copyright
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