Picasso's 'Guernica,' COMM 353, the nature of art and the anniversary of a bombing that changed the way we see the world

Copy of Picasso's 'Guernica' in Guernica (Creative Commons)

In class today, Robyn mentioned Picasso's painting "Guernica," his response to the terror bombing of a Basque city during the Spanish Civil War. Turned out today was the anniversary of the bombing, on April 26, 1937, the town of Guernica destroyed by German aircraft supporting the fascist revolution that brought Spanish Gen. Francisco Franco tp [pwer/ Today the German newspaper Der Spiegel had a writeup on the bombing and its aftermath that fills in the story behind the painting. Reported Annika Müller of Der Spiegel:

The Basque town of Guernica was bustling with activity on April 26, 1937. "It was market day, and there were finally some sweets on sale once again," says Luis Iriondo Aurtenetxea, who was 14 years old at the time. There was a cloudless sky, the 89-year-old adds, and glorious spring weather.

The diary of a German pilot who took off in his "Heinkel" bomber in Burgos at around 3 p.m. that day confirms Iriondo's recollections. "We couldn't have asked for better weather for the operation," the pilot wrote. Over the next few hours, he and 37 other pilots belonging to the "Condor Legion" would shower Guernica with thousands of bombs. They were supported by a squadron of fighter planes that flew so low "that one could make out the pilots' faces," according to reports from survivors.

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In the evening, when the bombers were finally gone and Iriondo could leave his shelter, the town that had been the spiritual and cultural center of the Basques was engulfed in flames. As the British historian Gijs van Hensbergen has written, by 7:45 p.m., Guernica had practically ceased to exist.

Hardly any of the houses, which were built primarily with bricks and wooden framing, remained intact. The town hall, the church and the hospital had been completely destroyed. That evening, the only thing remaining in its previous place was the sacred oak tree. What's more, not a single bomb had landed on the Astra weapons factory or the bridge in the suburb of Renteria, which was supposedly the primary objective of the attack.

Despite initial claims to the contrary, the Germans were not primarily concerned with clearing a path for Franco's troops. When testifying during the Nuremberg Trials, Hermann Göring, the leading Nazi figure and aviation minister since 1933, said that this effort to support General Franco was much more about having an ideal opportunity to test out his still young air force and examine in a live-fire situation "whether the material had been adequately developed."

Thus, Guernica was a dress rehearsal of sorts for the blitzkrieg and a new breed of warfare that held no regard for civilian populations. ...

Estimates of the death toll range from 200 to 3,000, in a town of 7,000. It was the first time heavy bombing had been unleashed on a civilian population, and Picasso, who was Spanish, was horrified. He was already commissioned to do a mural for the Spanish exhibit at an international fair in Paris, and he did the painting we know as "Guernica" instead. According to Wikipedia, which has an unusually good article on the painting, "Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace."

In class today, we were talking about art. By anybody's definition, the "Guernica" is a work of art.

After Franco's death, it was returned to Spain. When I saw it, the painting was still in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was powerful, and a reminder that sometimes the best art is political in a way that transcends the issues of the day. The picture above is of a tiled wall in Guernica that reproduces the Picasso painting. It is available in Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.