RELATED MATERIALS
PABLO PICASSO
Private website
A brief and concise video of Picasso's career entitled "How One Spanish Artist Changed Art Forever" produced by Park West Gallery.
A description of Guernica, its context, meaning and relevance.
A SUPER-HIGH RESOLUTION 436-GIGABYTE GUERNICA and a whole lot of information on the painting. The site details the piece's long, strange journey and brings together online records from 120 public and private archives, libraries, museums, institutions, and national and international agencies.
Link to CNN.com article "Paintings, Protest and Propaganda: A Visual History of Warfare." Author Joanna Bourke is a professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, and the editor of "War and Art: A Visual History of Modern Conflict."
With the bull as the unofficial national symbol of Picasso's homeland and the most resilient figure in the town of Guernica, it was most likely used is a symbol of Spain itself, the country still "standing" even after a brutal attack. While the bull is triumphant in the painting, the overall meaning of Guernica is less optimistic. Chaos and brutality seem to reign over civilization as it did during the real life bombing.
PABLO PICASSO's 1937 Guernica depicts the aftermath of bombing by Nazi German and Italian warplanes at the request of Spanish nationalist forces. The painting brought worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War and helped fund Spanish war relief went it on tour.