In a way, we were inflicting violence on the children.
During my years as a teaching assistant in Spain, I had the privilege of escorting several
of my fourth-grade classes to the Reina Sofia Museum of 20th century art in Madrid.
Now a painting or sculpture by Picasso can be difficult for anyone to wrap their heads
around, myself included, and this proved a particular challenge for the often less-than-attentive
groups of 9 year-olds we brought out of the Spanish public school system.
Even with an attentive guide from the museum, our students would begin to zone out after
only a few of his distorted portraits and sculptures.
The distances between teacher 'whisper shouts' of 'que os calléis', basically, 'shut
up', became shorter.
So when entering the area of the museum which holds Picasso's Guernica, my attention always
went to the students first; their dispositions would immediately change.
Initially they were drawn to the size (Guernica's canvas is as large as a wall), but soon the
museum guide would begin a low-voiced explication of the story behind it, asking the students
to point out what stuck out to them: the 'toro', the bull, the 'caballo', the horse, 'la
luz', the light.
60 precursor sketches resulted in the colossal canvas which stretches 25 feet wide and over
11 feet high; the black, white and grey paints give glossless life to horrific imagery.
Though my Spanish in the first year was insufficient to grasp each word, I knew that my student's
eyes were wide, their attention focused.
Rather than spoken word I had to interpret the moment in body language, in the stillness
of the class, the gesticulation of our guide.
No doubt we were exposing them to the violence of Spanish history, an exposure they didn't
ask for, but one every Spaniard needs.
Perhaps most difficult of all to explain is that the suffering depicted in Picasso's painting
was caused by the German Luftwaffe to a sleepy Spanish village in 1937, years before the
outbreak of world war 2, and onto a people who would remain uninvolved for the duration
of that conflict.
Perhaps the villagers were as confused as they were panicked when swastikas filled the
sky.
Whether our guide, in explaining the situation, actually used words like, 'slaughter',
'dismemberment', or 'burned alive' in telling them the story, I'll never know.
The Spanish Civil War is a oft overlooked part of 20th Century history, partially because
it was sandwiched between World Wars one and two, but also because it's a portion of
history Spaniards themselves tend to avoid.
Madrileños are often surprised to learn, for example, that in the northwest corner
of their city lie university buildings still pockmarked from bullet holes inflicted during
intense fighting there.
It started as a nationalist uprising against a legally elected government of the second
Spanish republic.
Before this rebellion could result in 36 years of fascist dictatorship, there was first nearly
three years of bloody conflict between 1936 and 1939.
Journalists and historians often use shorthand in order to be accurate and objective in their
descriptions, and so often call the rebelling side led by Francisco Franco "The Nationalists",
and the defending government side, "The Republicans".
But as perhaps you've heard me explain before, to leave it there is explanatory malpractice.
The Republican government was aided by a consortium of leftist organizations, international volunteers,
and depended on support from Stalin's Soviet Union as the war progressed.
While writers and journalists sympathetic to the Republican cause like Ernest Hemingway
debauched in the nightlife of Madrid just miles from the front lines, more serious persons
like George Orwell came from abroad and fought alongside native Spaniards to help, as he
put it, a democracy finally standing up to fascism.
For their part the Nationalists did count fascists among their ranks, as well as conservative
Catholics, industrialists, landowners, and those sympathetic to the 'strong man'
politics playing out in other parts of Europe.
They, like the republicans,received financial and military aid from abroad.
Franco's largests benefactors were Germany and Italy.
While the Italians and Germans had strategic interests in having another fascist European
state (not to mention one that would be indebted for their help), the Spanish Civil War also
served as a staging ground for military tactics used in upcoming conflicts.
Though not for the first time, one of those newer tactics would be carried out to its
macabre end in Guernica, the Basque capital near Bilbao.
In the center of Guernica stood a large oak tree.
It served as the location for the swearing in of officials of the new Basque government,
but more importantly, it was considered a sacred heart of the Basque people, a place
of rights and heritage spanning generations (1,101).
On April 26, 1937, its watering would have an ichorous character.
On market day in late afternoon, church bells warned of an approaching aircraft, a solo
German bomber, which assaulted the city center (2,_).
As civilians and some retreating soldiers began to leave shelter, more planes arrived,
these more aggressive, bombing and flying low, using machine guns against anyone regardless
of gender or age, soldier or not (1,620).
They strafed, fired, rounded, repeated until 100,000 pounds of explosives were dropped
over three hours (2,_).
Though accounts vary, somewhere between over a hundred and over a thousand died (4, 289).
Many of those assphyxiated in the shelters, deprived of oxygen by the raging fires.
While nationalist authorities tried to lay blame at the feet of the 'reds' who they
claimed burned the city in some form of retreat, the sheer number of eye witnesses to the bombing
as well as the bomb craters in the ground, made such obfuscation a wasted effort (4,287).
Though it wasn't the first bombing of a civilian target (5), it was unique.
As Paul Preston wrote in his book on the Spanish Civil War : "That Guernica was destroyed
by the German Condor Legion is no longer open to any doubt.
Moreover, it is this fact which gives the event its military significance, for the town
was the first in the world's history to have been entirely destroyed by aerial bombing"
(4,288)
The intent was clearly the intimidation of a people, a terror tactic carried out indiscriminately.
While there were legitimate military targets in and around Guernica, the mowing down of
fleeing civilians in a field was certainly not part of targeting them.
The Times and the New York Times published an account of correspondent George Steer which
described the "demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle
of the Basque race."
(3) Though his sympathies clearly lay with the Basque nationalists, his general account
of the scene was mostly reliable.
The world's attention turned towards the plight of the republicans once more.p
A nation away, in Paris, Pablo Picasso read Steer's account of the planes plunging "low...to
machinegun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields."
(3) Already under commission by the Spanish Republic for the international exhibition
in 1937, Picasso shifted what had been his artistic focus since January (1,623).
Now, early in May, he would paint the suffering at Guernica.
"In the panel on which I am working," he said.
"which I shall call Guernica...I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste
which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death."
(6)
Overhanging the entire image is a bright light, the burning bulb of a bomb or the sun; the
Spanish words for bulb, 'bombilla', being very close to the word for bomb, 'bomba'.
Picasso would have read about the 'thousand firebombs' on the front page of French newspapers
(6).
Women outnumber men in the image, presumably because most men of fighting age would be
conscripted and out of town when the bombing occurred, making women the premiere victims.
Three women appear on the right side of the painting, one appears trapped in fire, arms
outstretched.
Another drags a swollen leg while gazing towards the light.
A third enters carrying a lamp, perhaps looking for loved ones in the smoke and rubble.
There is a fourth woman in Guernica, more striking than the rest due to the fact she
holds a dead infant in arms, lost to asphyxiation.
On the ground is a dismembered soldier, his body and sword in pieces.
Though his agony dashes the hopes for the Republic, the flower growing from his sword
hilt reveals a chance at victory over the fascist rebels (6-12).
Most prominent, but less easy to interpret are the bull and the horse.
The horse, pierced by a spear, might represent the wounded democracy.
Just as possibly, it represents the many animals killed by bombs that afternoon in April.
The bull, a quintessential Spanish image, may be the contorted reaction of Picasso himself
(he often used a bull to depict his ego), but it may also represent Franco's fascism,
a rampaging animal out of control (6-12).
After exposition in Paris, Guernica went on tour in Europe, raising awareness of the plight
of civilians in the civil war, and earning the piece's reputation as one of the most
powerful antiwar and anti-fascist ever created (8&10).
Picasso's condemnation may have been specific to the
bombing of April 1937, but his imagery was a universal testament to the terror of war.
Though Guernica was a major propaganda victory for the Republic, the civilian bombardments
never stopped.
Madrid and Barcelona became major targets in a prominent strategy to weaken Republican
strongholds under siege.
Franco's forces toppled Madrid, and thus the Republic, in 1939.
Fearing Nazi invasion of France, Picasso sent Guernica to the United States Museum of Modern
Art in New York.
The painting, he demanded, was not to reside in Spain until democracy was restored.
The move was prudent.
Paris was occupied in June 1940.
A German gestapo officer, rummaging through Picasso's studio came upon a photo of Guernica's
creation process.
"Did you do this?" the officer asked.
Picasso's reply, perhaps apocryphal, is that of legend.
"No. you did" (13&14).
The juxtaposition is one that defines the politics after the great war, when the feckless
center fell out of European politics, the radicalization of a continent, when kings
ceded to Marchers, shops became Judenfrei, and churches burned in the countryside.
Like a biosphere in a jar, the Spanish Civil War came to encapsulate those political canyons.
A staging ground for world war II, where European fascists supported nationalists, the Republic
by communist international, and imperial democracies like Britain and France became self-imposed
neutrals, eunuch spectators of the violence in villages like Guernica.
Picasso's Guernica, then, was a further distillation of this reality.
The Civil War being a microcosm of conflicts between European governments, Guernica presented
the suffering of civilians because of that conflict, the logical gruesome endpoint of
the clash of great ideologies, the annihilation of an entire town condensed into twisted forms
on a black and grey palette.
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And this message isn't a solicitation of anything 'YouTubery'.
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Sometimes I get to make really cool videos and share them with the world.
This is one of those times, and for that reason I am very thankful.
And I just wanted to say to you: 'Thank you'.
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