Picasso Paints War
1937 AD
1937 1937
02.38W43.16N
ART

GUERNICA, SPAIN
	In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, German pilots fighting for General Francisco Franco bombed to destruction the little town of Guernica. Thousands of people were killed and injured.
	The massacre so deeply angered the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso that he used all his genius to show the world the cruelty of war. For ten days he sketched and re-sketched, then went to work with his brush to create "Guernica," a 10 foot high by 20 foot wide painting of dark colors showing a jumbled assembly of stark figures in agony and rage.
	Later, the German ambassador visited the artist at his home in France. Seeing a photograph of "Guernica," he said, "So you did that, Monsieur Picasso?"
	"No!" snapped the artist, "You did it!"
	Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain, but lived in France from 1904 until his death in 1973. He is considered one of the greatest of 20th Century artists.
	He was primarily a painter, but in later life took up sculpture and ceramics.
	In his early work, Picasso used shades of blue to capture the tension and inner pain of his subjects. Then, for a while, he attempted to create a purely abstract form of art with paintings that bore little resemblance to recognizable objects. Beginning in 1918 he returned to a more representational style, then adopted the distorted and often angular style for which he is most famous. In 1945, with the end of World War II, his work began to take on a more cheerful and relaxed quality that he maintained for the rest of his life.