Guernica by Pablo Picasso
Creative art attracts a huge audience and people do not only watch the beautiful design and colors of art; they listen to the art speak to each one of them. Art can have a political, emotional, or spiritual message word cannot express. That is why since ancient times the creative works of art have had floods of audiences from all over the world. While many political figures have been accused of messages they spoke on a political rally, no creative artist has ever been accused of expressing politics in their pictures. However, famous artwork such as Guernica by Pablo Picasso and The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot has played a big role in sensitizing the public about the adverse effect of war on innocent lives.
Guernica expresses the sufferings war inflicts on individuals, especially innocent civilians. Picasso painted it during the Spanish civil war as a reaction to the Nazi’s bombing in the town of Guernica. This works was given a monumental status and has since become a reminder of the calamity war beings to the people. After completion, Guernica’s artwork was displayed all over the world. It became famous and recognized widely. As the fame and presence of Guernica spread globally, the world’s attention was directed to the Spanish Civil War as the people began becoming aware of the war. There are various interpretations of Guernica and most of them contradict each other. For example, while some people interpreted the presence of the bull and the horse as a Spanish Culture, Picasso used these characters to play different roles. The rampaging bull could have represented the assault of Fascism. According to Picasso, the bull represented the brutality and darkness that rampaged at the time of the civil war. He also said that the horse meant the people living in Guernica at the time of the war.
Guernica town is in a province of Biscay and is in Basque Country. It was known as the northern bastion during the Spanish Civil War and is the epicenter of Basque culture which adds to its importance as a target area. At the time of the war, the Republican forces were made up of Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, and many more factions. The Nationalist was less factionalized as compared to Republican forces and General Francisco Franco led them. The people desired to return to the days when Spain was based on Catholic family values, law, and order. Guernica was bombed using warplanes commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen on Monday morning at about 16:30 am on April 26th, 1937 and it took two hours. Hitler led the Germany forces and supported the Nationalists with materials for the war. He used the war to test out new tactics and weapons. Later on, Blitzkrieg began using intense aerial bombardment as an essential initial step in his tactics. Picasso used Guernica art to show that art can bring about self-assertion that frees humans and protects them from adverse forces like death, political crime, and war.
At the time of the bombing, Picasso was working for a Paris Exhibition in his original country and had been commissioned by the Spanish Republican government. On hearing about the Guernica bombing, he left the Exhibition idea and started working on Guernica art. In the beginning, the art gained very little attention and attraction. It later became popular and a symbol of destruction on innocent lives.
Eliot’s modernist poem, The Waste Land, highlights the disastrous effect of World War I. it was first published in 1922. The poem has five sections with many shifting speakers that examine carefully themes of war, trauma, and death. It shares the emotional and physical destruction of the postwar landscape. It comprises of settings such as the bedroom of a wealthy woman, a sea where a man has drowned, garbage full of Thames, and a drought –worn desert. In its last section the poem call for peace. The poem examines life in London after the First World War
In the first stanza, Marie, remembers the enjoyable time before World War I in her speech. Eliot also includes references to Germany to show he is not Russian but German. Marie speaks about April as the cruelest month. The poem is about loss and brokenness. Eliot suggests that World War I brought about emotional, social, and psychological collapse. The characters Eliot brings in such as Lil whose friends discuss her private unhappy marriage life in a London pub show a lack of deeper meaning and intimacy in relationships. Eliot also shows that people lack spiritual significance. In the “Fire Sermon,” for example, the typist’s job involves copying from others, eats processed food, and listens to gramophone music. Eliot tries to sensitize the people that because of the war life had lost meaning. He wrote this poem after World War I when most people had gone through the loss of loved ones, lack of essential, and pain.
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