In 1937 Pablo Picasso made an unprecedented statement against war through the painting Guernica. In 1937 the Spanish Civil War was at its peak which only set the stage for Picasso’s tensions. It was not until the Nazis bombed the innocent, civilian populated town of Guernica resulting in numerous deaths. Guernica was Picasso’s method of expressing the destruction that is inevitably associated with war by illustrating images of people shouting with anguish. Picasso also expresses a look of disorganization throughout the scene along with a color scheme that work in tandem to mask the meaning and message of the piece. There are even animals such as a bull and a horse present amongst the madness. In this essay I will focus on the significance and details of the people and animals, and also of the color and organization of images to further develop Picasso’s reason for the painting.

The Mona Lisa may be one of the most well-known portraits ever created. This picture shows a woman who sits confidently with a slight smirk on her face. Every asset of this picture is purposely included to show the power that a painting can create for a person. Picasso’s expression of people in Guernica is drastically different than how The Mona Lisa is expressed. Limbs are scattered throughout the painting with heads, arms, and legs fully intact for the observer to see. This degradation of the human body into pieces is the first technique Picasso uses to express his antiwar agenda. Unlike former artists who used a well put together human figure to express power, Picasso uses limbs and pieces of several people to express their weak and helpless state. This broken picture of humans that is expressed is used to show how the Nazis and the Spanish government attempted to break the people that lived in the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. While there is not much detail in the painting attached to these people, it is what is not there that serves as the strongest evidence for Picasso’s stance against war. There are not any weapons among the debris causing the viewer to assume the people were innocent and were not a threat to anyone. Another way that the despair of war is expressed in the painting is through the facial expressions on each individual face. While pain, anguish, and horror are some of the immediate expressions that are seen, the most disturbing is the look of surprise on each and every face. This further expresses the fact that these people did not expect anything and were nothing more than civilians. Picasso also uses less details to express more by creating a fictional face on the people. This is a tactic used to say that these people who die will not mean anything once they die. They could be anyone and their death does not serve substantial enough to document who they are. War not only kills the unsuspecting but also devalues their identity.

While this may be the first time that Picasso has developed such a strong argument against war, it is not the first time that he comments on the civilian people and the government. He uses the same motifs, a horse to represent the common people and the bull to represent the government, throughout many of pieces. However, in this painting he uses them together in a way to argue against war and the destruction that comes with it. While both the bull and the horse are not overly detailed, it is clear that the horse is more fragmented than the bull. Also the horse appears to be laying on its side which is a different than the horses seen in portraits of great conquerors in which their horses are standing tall and strong. Picasso uses his motifs that are not normally used together in this way to express the same idea that a strong forceful government mixed with a civilian population can only lead to the destruction of the population. This is shown through the expression on the horse’s face of defeat and anguish while the expression of the bull is one of content, providing the evidence that as long as the government is strong and unharmed, the effects of their people does not matter. 

While the specific features and figures in the painting are planned and used by Picasso to persuade the viewer to see war through is eyes, the color scheme of it all also provides meaning in itself. The painting consists of a black, white, and gray color scheme with a hint of a dull blue mixed in as well. Picasso picks this color scheme to produce a vibe of death and despair rather than using hot colors such as red, yellow, and orange which have been used in other cases to show life, exuberance, and love. He further plays on this aspect of using colorless color scheme to show loss of hope by including an image of a sun and candle in the painting. The sun can be seen above the horse flailing with discomfort and the candle is seen in the hand of a severed arm. Instead of consisting of a burst of red and yellow light, both the sun and candle are a empty white as if to show the hope for the horse, representing the common people, and the light, in the hand of an arm that once belonged to the civilian, are has run out. Also, the dark back ground of the painting clashes with the white foreground. The foreground is made up by the figures and images and the background is just dark nothingness. Through this color scheme Picasso transports these people into a space where they are lost forever, a place that is unlike the world we live in or have ever imagined. There is nowhere for these people to go except to disappear into a vast darkness. Picasso is saying that this is what happens to everyone when war takes place, the civilians are the ones that face the hard ache, which is shown on their faces, but they are also forgotten and destined to be just another number in the casualty count. 

The last technique that Picasso uses is the way he organizes the layout of the painting, or in this case, disorganizes it. The lines in the painting consist of sharp jagged lines and smooth curvy lines which together create an image of chaos. There is no organization in the painting and in some cases it is hard to even make out a clear picture at all. There are significant reasons as to why Picasso creates chaos and those are to again devalue the life of a commoner and to show the effects of war. The devaluation of the civilian is done by Picasso painting limbs on top of other people and mixing the figures upon each other. This is a metaphor as to how the world looks at people when they die in war as pieces and not the husband or brother or daughter they actually were. The disorganization also shows the devastating effects of war by creating an image of a post war community. The same mix of limbs and figures shows the literal chaos that the explosion of war can bring to everyone. The entire community loses its identity along with the people in it. This is how the organization alone can bring the devastation of war to life. 

Through examining other components in the painting, the viewer can understand the full extent of Picasso’s message. Images expressing despair, surprise, and destruction can all be seen in Guernica while it may take a closer reading to understand these messages. Through the images in the painting it is clear that Picasso does not only have an antiwar stance but also wants the common people not to be afraid to see the problems with the government. This can apply to people in 2016 in how they associate with the government. Too many people today are voting straight ticket which leads to many of today’s society not to know anything about our government and their decisions. Picasso’s message can be used to tell them that it is indeed okay to ask if what they are planning to do is really beneficial for them. We have been given a voice for a reason and Guernica serves as an example of how to question the authority.
