How Picasso’s Great Anti-war Mural Flopped
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When it comes to art against tyranny, no work is more seared into our consciousness than Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s dark, howling mural against fascist terror. Created in 1937 at the height of the Spanish Civil War, it has in the 85 years since become a universal statement about human suffering in the face of political violence. Throughout World War II, it stood for resistance to Nazi aggression; during Vietnam controversies such as the My Lai massacre, protesters invoked it against the U.S. military. Today, its shrieking women and lifeless bodies conjure the corpse-strewn streets of the Kyiv suburb of Bucha after Vladimir Putin’s brutal assault.
But Guernica’s enduring status was hardly foreordained. Picasso was deeply apolitical and had shown little interest in the Spanish Civil War before he created it. Nor had he ever done a public mural, let alone one about a bombed city. And the work was so disdained when it was first shown that it very nearly didn’t make it past its debut.
The story begins in the fall and winter of 1936–37, amid Europe’s first great military confrontation with fascism. From the outset of the war that summer, there was blood in the streets of Barcelona, where Picasso’s mother and sister lived. In September, in an attempt to draw international attention
