by Brean Schell

Created on: April 23, 2009

Completed in 1937, Picasso's Guernica is an enduring testament to the fear and uncertainty that was ever-present in daily life during the Spanish Civil War, and is still today an anti-war image and a reminder of the civilian cost of violent conflict.

The enormous black and white canvas is dominated by the image of a horse in the throes of death, surrounded by images of human suffering. A mother cradles the corpse of the child she was suckling, a laborer reaches for his arm with the very limb he seeks, and others look on, while behind them their home burns.

Guernica is situated both within and without a building, in the cubist style Pablo Picasso rocketed to fame and some say perfected, so the images we see are all at once a jumbled mess of pain and fear, yet separate symbols of Spanish life and the futility of conflict.

The horse we are so drawn to, with its gaping wound and javelin head medallion, is a frame for the hidden image of a grotesque, cartoonish human skull, a forbearer for the fates of the figures within the work, and a reminder of the real, sentient souls that perished when the 28 German bombers fell upon the Basque town of Guernica.
Also hidden within the crumpling foreleg of the horse is a bull's head, the body of which continues no further than the horses belly. Both horses and bulls were important in Spanish culture, and symbolize strength and perseverance. That the horse is dying in Guernica, but both bulls remain steadfast serves as a reminder that the people rebuilt, and survived as best they could.

Following the line of the horses breast we are drawn to a woman, pulled from her bed, and staring in confusion at the sky, her stance one of supplication and passive protest. Her lined hands and feet, a brutal testament to the labor of her life. The sky itself is dominated by the bulb burning obscenely brightly in the room, an electric bulb, the technology that gives us light, brings our burning.

Sinking down from the electric bulb a lamp is held high and steady by a man, fearful, leaning out of the very building that burns around him. To the right, a figure seems to scream in fear and pain, while simultaneously calling down divine assistance, the stigmata on this figures forehead add weight to the religious element to the work.

Far to the left of Geurnica, a stead fast bull, stands over the wailing nursing mother, her child a martyr, as we know from the stigmatas present on both tiny palms, and the mother's brow. Forefront to the mother and child, a soldier lies, torn asunder, his sword broken, his body bleeding, he too, is a martyr.

Despite the intricate symbolic detail in Guernica, the figures themselves seem almost cartoonish, raw and flat, the true, worked detail being in the horse, its coat painstakingly even, its mane, wild but glossy and free. No matter how often or how long I look at and study this enduring work, I am always draw to the horses mane; its shimmering wildness, its freedom. Symbolic of the spirit of the towns people, and equally, all peoples affected terribly by war and conflict; we must go on, and we shall thrive.

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