Entry 10

 Pablo Picasso's Guernica

 image taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PicassoGuernica.jpg

Guernica by artist Pablo Picasso is perhaps one of the starkest and most brutal anti-war paintings ever conceived. It uses the bombing of Guernica, which was carried out by Spanish Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, to illustrate how war inflicts suffering and tragedy on the innocent. We see first hand how the bombing has affected the civilians, livestock, and structural integrity of the village. A woman grieves over her dead child, a horse falls over in agony after being run through by a spear, a dead dismembered soldier rest his hand on a severed arm that still grasps a broken sword; no one has been spared from this tragedy and Picasso uses a great deal of symbolism and iconography to further stress the point.  

Guernica is all about symbols. The lights that illuminate the scene and the sources of light within it are all steeped with meaning. Picasso uses a monotone pallet of white, black, and grey to stress the pain and chaos of the situation. The somber mood these colors create reflect the tragedy of both the bombing and war in general. Within the painting are two sources of light, a bare bulb and a flame-lit lamp. Bare bulbs were common features in torturer's cells and the flame is both a symbol of tragedy and hope. Light here helps create the mode but it is much more than that. The two sources of light depicted have meaning, history, and purpose. The candle and the bulb are players in the story.