"Guernica" is a painting-legend or an allegory of war. Cultural code: "Guernica" by Pablo Picasso Why contemporaries did not accept Guernica's painting
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The Moscow branch of the Cervantes Institute is hosting the exhibition "Guernica: Spain 1937 - Moscow 2017". Three dozen artists from Russia, Spain and Latin America turned to the famous painting by Pablo Picasso in connection with the 80th anniversary of its appearance. Tatiana Pigareva, head of the culture department of the Cervantes Institute, spoke about the creation and reading of Guernica.
Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica" - a canvas measuring 3.5 by 7.8 meters - in 33 days. He was then 55 years old. In fact, “having passed through half of earthly life” (Dante considered “half” of his path 35, the numbers rhyme), Picasso creates his main picture. As Don Quixote was born from the idea of a parody story, so Guernica was to become nothing more than a masterpiece of propaganda. But once Dante intervened in the conversation, let us recall his idea of a “multi-minded” interpretation of poetry from a letter to Cangrande della Scala: an interpretation of the historical, moral, allegorical and “anagogic” (sublime). From the reality of the first plan to the realities of the "higher order". Guernica clearly deserves Dante's optics.
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Historical interpretation
In January 1937, the government of the Spanish Republic commissioned Picasso for a monumental work for a pavilion at the World's Fair in Paris, which is due to open in the summer. There is a civil war. The most famous Spanish artist living in France has already been appointed director of the Prado Museum. He "runs" the museum from a distance, but is very proud of the title. For the pavilion of the belligerent country (whose main task is to declare the viability of the republic and raise funds for the people's army), Picasso's participation is the most important trump card. The Spanish Parisian has never painted political pictures (the dove of peace will be born in 1949, "flying out" just from "Guernica"), but he accepts the order. And also the fee. Republicans talk about Picasso's "gift", who was only paid for canvas and paints. Later, the real figure will be published: 150,000 francs, 15% of the cost of the entire pavilion in Spain, 9 times more than Picasso received for the most expensive of the previously sold works.
For four months, an artist who is in a creative crisis does not write anything. And here Guernica intervened in the story, or rather, on the contrary. April 26, Monday, the planes of the German legion "Condor", Franco's allies, bombed the peaceful city for three and a half hours. Guernica, a symbol of the traditional freedoms of the Basque people (under a local oak tree, the kings of Spain swore an oath of freedom to respect these) - becomes symbols of the horrors of war in the twentieth century. "There are only five whole houses left in Guernica", "A tragedy unseen by the world" - such headlines are full of Parisian newspapers. The death toll ranges from 200 to a thousand. Everything, of course, is relative. Tragically relative. Guernica is small compared to the Holocaust and Hiroshima, but in this first bombing of a peaceful city in the history of Europe, there was a special symbolic intensity. After all, the sacrifice of Christ is statistically small in comparison with the massacres of Attila or Genghis Khan.
The same mistake is repeated in art history texts about "Guernica": the government of the republic did not order a painting about the tragedy of Guernica, the order was received four months before the bombing, and the topic was not discussed. But Guernica, as Rafael Alberti recalled, "struck Picasso like a blow of a bull's horn." She became a catalyst, an explosion that knocked Picasso out of the crisis - into work. On May 1, the first sketch appears: a bull, a wounded horse, a woman with a lamp in her hand. The limiting convention. The details of the sketches vary. Either a winged Pegasus flies out of a wound on the side of the horse, and the horse itself writhes in pain, then it tramples with the hooves of a wounded warrior, then it turns into a downcast child's horse (it is not for nothing that Picasso dreams of “writing like a child” during these years), then it rears up with frightening grin. The bull has a formidable appearance, then aloof-frozen, then completely human, with large sad eyes. On the first day, there are only five sketches, the pace of work grows in rhythm crescendo, in addition to the original trinity, the prostrate bodies of a warrior and a woman appear, a weeping mother with a dead child. Picasso himself said that he wrote this work in a "state of trance", without stopping, for 14 hours a day. “I didn’t let go of my brushes, like Republican soldiers did guns,” he admits in an interview. The first sketch of the entire composition is dated May 9. On May 11, Dora Maar, Picasso's muse of the Guernica era, photographs the first composition on canvas - in a new workshop on Rue des Grands Augustin, 7. Her photographs will reflect the eight phases of work on the painting - and this series of photographs will become a unique testimony: a monument to the evolution of design and the birth of a masterpiece.
The first photo in the center of the composition emphasizes the raised fist of a wounded - but triumphant - soldier, a visual metaphor for the republican slogan "No pasarán"("They will not pass"). The action takes place on the square, flames engulfed the house, the bodies of the victims are mixed, the frightened woman collides with the murdered woman, a burning woman with outstretched arms falls from the window. Everything flies, runs and falls apart. In the second photo, a sheaf of ears appears in the soldier's muscular fist, followed by the rising sun. But as the work progresses, head-on political statements, the language of the poster, disappear from the picture. In the place of the sun, there is now a mysterious lamp-eye with sharp rays, the position of the dead soldier changes: the fist is lowered, and the body with outstretched arms rather refers to the crucifixion. A dead woman disappears, triangles appear more and more clearly in the composition, the construction of an antique frieze with antique clarity. The bull moves from the center to the corner, curled up in a half ring around the woman with the dead child. And in place of the chopped off tree (the only straight line - and very quickly disappeared - a reference to the specifics of Guernica), there is a corner of the table with a wounded bird. The action moves into a room - more precisely, a symbolic, broken interior space - where a door is open on the side, the floor is lined (either a tile, or a map of military operations), and time stands still.
The same mistake is repeated in art history texts about "Guernica": the government of the republic did not order a painting about the tragedy of Guernica, the order was received four months before the bombing, and the topic was not discussed.
Until the last moment, Picasso tried to introduce elements of color into his work: he glued red tears to their faces, cut dresses from wallpaper and colorful paper for three women (burning, running and sobbing over a child). Red and gold robe of a sobbing woman moved to collage "Femmes à leur toilette", which now adorns the residence of the French ambassador in Madrid (looking at this work, you understand that the duende of Guernica saved the masterpiece from bad taste). A running woman with bared buttocks in the first stages of work had a piece of toilet paper in her hand - this physiology referred to a series of grotesque satirical engravings "Franco's Dream and Lies", which Picasso was finishing at the same time. In one of the latest versions of Guernica, instead of the drawn paper, a piece of real paper appears - glued to the left hand. Closer to the finale, only fragments of color remain - red tears on the runner's cheek and a wound on the neck of a dead child. In June, a delegation from the Republican government inspects the work. With them, Picasso tore off the last blotches of collage from the canvas: red scraps of paper, a tear and a wound. Everyone applauded. “We saw how Guernica gained tremendous restraint, worthy of the monastic restraint of El Escorial, but immersed in the horror of chaos,” one of those present recalled.
The name "Guernica" also appeared only at the end of the work. Here the versions diverge. Someone claims that a delegation of Basque politicians visited Picasso's workshop and one of them exclaimed: "This is Guernica!" Other witnesses claim that the name was suggested by Paul Eluard, who was just writing the poem. Victoire de Guernica, or Christian Zervos, editor-in-chief of the magazine Cahiers d "Art, on whose order Dora Maar photographed the stages of work. It is important that in the process of work, Picasso deliberately departs from a specific historical plot, but agrees to the name - extremely effective -, creating the basis for subsequent disagreements and disputes.
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The controversy began as soon as on June 4 the work left the workshop and took its place in the main hall of the Spanish pavilion. Particularly staunch Marxists demanded that this "Cubist something" be removed. Louis Aragon lamented that an excessive tendency towards the avant-garde deprived the work of the "semantic efficacy of socialist realism." The reaction of the public was also ambiguous. Le Corbusier, who was present at the opening of the pavilion, wrote: "Guernica saw mainly the backs of visitors, it seemed repulsive to them." Time sets the prism of perception. In 1937, peaceful Europe wanted to see something different: progress, the triumph of technology, a bright future that had not yet turned into the yawning heights that Picasso had envisioned in his Guernica. The press wrote enthusiastically about the pavilions of Germany and the USSR (the latter was crowned with "Worker and Collective Farm Woman"), and the pavilion of Spain - built by prominent architects Luis Lacasa and Jose Luis Sert (Sert's last landmark project will be the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona) - was not even mentioned in the catalog of "the main objects of the exhibition".
Particularly staunch Marxists demanded that this "Cubist something" be removed.
After Paris, "Guernica" will go on a world tour of England, Scandinavia, the United States, and then will acquire a temporary residence - "before the advent of democracy in Spain," as Picasso bequeathed - in New York MоMA... Since the early 1970s, the return of the painting has been discussed. Franco, it was argued, was not opposed. But Picasso, as expected, did not agree. After lengthy negotiations (Picasso's daughter demanded that abortions and divorces be allowed in Spain first), on September 10, 1981, the Guernica arrived in Spain aboard the Boeing Lope de Vega. The epic play was drawing to a close. On October 25, on the day of the centenary of the birth of Picasso, a new exhibition opened in the Prado - in Cason del Buen-Retro, a branch of the museum: "Guernica" and dozens of sketches. In the early years, the painting was hidden behind bulletproof glass, and gendarmes were on duty next to it. Dolores Ibarruri, chairman of the Spanish Communist Party, will put an end to history in another fiery speech: “The war is over. The last exile arrived at home. " In 1992 "Guernica" will move from Prado to the Reina Sofia Center for the Arts and will become its main, iconic exhibit. Now two caretakers are vigilantly guarding her from photographers.
Moral interpretation
When the world experienced the horrors of World War II, the prophetic meaning of Guernica acquired a new meaning. The title of "the main anti-war masterpiece of the 20th century" sounds formal, but reflects the essence. In the context of Spanish art, Picasso's masterpiece ranks with Velazquez's Delirium's Surrender and Goya's Execution of May 3. The dream of Miguel Sugasa, director of the Prado until March 2017, was the creation of a "Hall of Peace" in Salon de Reynos, the second branch of the museum, whose renovation competition had recently ended. There, according to the project of Sugasy, all three masterpieces were to be located (all the more so since "Delivering Breda" was written for Salon de Reynos). In the layout of the winning project by Norman Foster and Carlos Rubio, the dream of the Prado director (as well as the will of Picasso himself, which Sugas had repeatedly emphasized) was embodied. This "attempt on a masterpiece" caused a scandal between museums, the king of Spain assured that "Guernica" would not leave the Reina Sofia Center for the Arts, and Sugasa soon resigned. The Hall of Peace fiasco was one of the reasons.
The Surrender of Breda was written in 1635, 300 years before Guernica. Justin of Nassau, governor of Breda, taken by the Spaniards after a long siege (it was one of the few victories in a series of many defeats in the war with the Netherlands, and the "spirit-lifting" role of the event was paramount), gives the keys to the city to the commander-in-chief of the Spaniards Ambrosio Spinole. In this era, war is the main man's business. Yes, the battlefield is smoking in the depths of the picture, but both the winners and the vanquished were painted by Velazquez with the same degree of respect and detachment as aristocrats and jesters in his other paintings. The Spaniards won, but Spinola does not allow the governor to kneel. Velazquez writes not the horror of the massacre, but the nobility of true victory. The world has not yet lost its integrity, the war is still worthy of a ceremonial portrait. For Goya, war is already manifested as a metaphysical evil. The evil "Caprichos" and the soldiers of the "Disasters of War" have the same demonic grin. The ranks of the French, killing the Madrid rebels in the "Execution of May 3", merge into a faceless many-legged monster. But behind the hill of Principe Pio, where the atrocity is committed, the palaces and churches of Madrid still rise. The very matter of the world is alive, evil is transient. A fearless man in a white shirt throws up his hands. This is a celebration of the crucifixion, but it is a celebration. "Guernica" by Picasso is a tragic and incredible insight - and a warning to humanity. Ahead of time, that metaphysical horror that will be shown by the Second World War, Hiroshima, all those upcoming massacres and terrorist attacks that inevitably find themselves in the field of attraction of "Guernica". This is not cubism or surrealism: this is chaos, this is the death of matter itself.
The woman who falls from the burning house in Guernica has her arms thrown up in the same way as the hero in the white shirt in Goya's Shooting (in the sketches, Picasso changes the position of her hands several times and stops at an explicit quote). Many people write about it. But no one paid attention to the fact that the bull in "Guernica" is bent in the same way as the horse in "Delirium of Delirium" by Velazquez. On the left flank at Guernica - Goya, on the right - Velazquez. Perhaps this is an accident. But the three tragedies of the war - even if they did not meet in the "Hall of Peace" - are inseparable in the consciousness of the world.
Allegorical interpretation
Interpretations and versions of the interpreters of "Guernica" will be enough for a whole polyphonic chorus, turning into a cacophony. What does horse mean? The horse is a bloody victim; no - this is the people who threw off the aristocrat rider; no - this is an allegory of Francoism and nothing else; no - this is an allegory of a woman seduced and pierced by the sword of betrayal; but no - this is Spain itself! You are wrong, Spain is a bull! No, the bull is the forces of evil, world evil, fascism! Quite the opposite: he is the protector of a woman with a child, he is strength. Yes, this is the Minotaur, macho, Picasso himself, a self-portrait, is it really incomprehensible! Wait, a self-portrait is a bust of a warrior, Picasso adored antiquity. No, a warrior is a torrero - a soldier of the republic - a ruined civilization. Nothing of the kind, a ruined civilization is a house on fire. No, it's a wounded bird. The bird is saving America! You are mistaken, everything is much simpler: this is a pigeon from Piazza Merced in Malaga, where the artist's childhood passed. Have you seen the sketches? This is the transformation of the Pegasus that flew out of the horse's wound in early versions! Wait: she has a broken wing, she is a bombing victim! So where is the bird in there? You can't even see her ...
The picture lacked clarity for the ideological struggle. Picasso answered all questions about the symbolism of the characters that he had already said everything with paints and words were superfluous.
At first, the republicans tried to fight the allegorical complexity of the picture. Juan Larrea, a poet and friend of Picasso, even wrote him an official letter in 1947 asking him to "confirm in monosyllables" that a wounded horse is a symbol of agonizing Francoism (imagine Florence, which asks Dante for written confirmation that the lion at the entrance to hell is this is the republic, but the lynx is the papal curia).
The picture lacked clarity for the ideological struggle. More than enough for eternity. Picasso answered all questions about the symbolism of the characters that he had already said everything with paints and words were superfluous. The plurality of allegories does not in any way overshadow, but only enriches the meaning.
The semantic field of "Guernica" contains all of Picasso's quests: "Avignon Maidens" and scenes of bullfighting, "Minotauromachy" and "Crucifixion", triangular compositions of the blue period and sharp corners of cubism. With all the total novelty in "Guernica" one can find echoes of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment", "Commentary on the Apocalypse" by Beat Liebanski, mosaics of Ravenna, Romanesque painting, paintings by Baldung Green, "The Crucifixion" by Pordenone and "Horrors of War" by Rubens (there is a woman with hands raised, and a mother with a dead baby, and a man lying prostrate, and Venus stretching out her hand almost like a "mask" with a lamp). Obviously involved in the allegorical choir and the personal life of Picasso. While working on Guernica, he is still married to Olga Khokhlova, but the young Marie-Thérèse Walter has just given birth to his daughter Maya, and the new muse Dora Maar is actively involved in the work on the painting. And so the bull (somewhat reminiscent of Picasso's self-portraits) looks at a woman falling from a burning house, and at a woman with a child, and at the "mask" that illuminates the path. And this bull-Minotaur is located just like Velasquez in the "Meninas". But what's on the back of the canvas? It remains to peer.
Anagogical interpretation
Chatting with Paul Eluard at the legendary cafe Les deux magots in the Place Saint-Germain, Picasso saw a woman in white gloves playing with a knife. She dropped it vertically onto her open palm on the table. The point now fell between the fingers, then dug into the hand. Picasso begged for a bloody glove as a gift. This is how they met Dora Maar. It was she who found a workshop for Picasso in the house number 7 on Bolshoy Avgustintsy Street, where the huge canvas of "Guernica" was placed. This studio used to host meetings of the leftist group. Contre-Attaque under the leadership of Georges Bataille, whose lover Dora Maar was before meeting Picasso. The history of this acquaintance is described by many biographers. But for the sake of completeness, I look through Bataille's biography, and suddenly an incredible detail: the very attic, the "headquarters" Contre-Attaque, was described by Balzac in The Unknown Masterpiece. An incredible, impossible coincidence! This means that "Guernica" was created where Balzac placed the action of the story, in which in 1831 he predicted the birth of avant-garde painting, describing the portrait of "Beautiful Noisea" - "a disorderly combination of strokes, outlined by many strange lines, forming a kind of fence of colors ... chaos colors, tones, indefinite shades, forming a kind of formless nebula "- what remains of the masterpiece, on which the character of Balzac, the brilliant artist Frenhofer, worked for 10 years. I ask my Parisian friends to send me a photo of the house. There is a memorial plaque on the facade: “Picasso lived here from 1936 to 1955. In this workshop he painted Guernica. In the same house Balzac placed the action of his story “The Unknown Masterpiece” ”.
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Blessed are the inventors of the bicycle. It turned out that the fact is well known. But few people remember the plot of the story, the story with abstraction and another important detail. Balzac's heroes see in the corner of the painting "the tip of a lovely leg, a living leg" - "a fragment that survived an incredible, slow, gradual destruction", it appears "like the torso of Venus in the middle of the ruins of a burnt city." What do we see in the right corner of Guernica? A terrible, ugly, crippled woman's leg. Fragment of the "beautiful Noisese" of the twentieth century. Noisezes from Guernica. Such a coincidence cannot be accidental. In addition, Picasso illustrated Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece in 1927. Like Frenhofer, Picasso cannot complete his masterpiece. For years he wrote "sketches" for the finished work, endless "Weeping Women", "Weeping Women", "Women with a Dead Child", even more harsh and frightening than the characters of "Guernica". The meeting of two masterpieces - Balzac and Picasso - at 7 Bolshoy Avgustintsy Street could not fail to take place. This is a story about the infinity and incompleteness of art. About the unattainability of the ideal and embodiment, about deafness to prophecies. About the artist's mission. About the pain of inaudibility. About the threatening chaos. About everything important in "Guernica".
And yet, medieval scholastics correlated the "anagogic", sublime, interpretation of texts with hope. "Guernica" is written in black and white, but most viewers remember it in color. This is another mystery of the picture. The color is alive, but it is hidden under the ash-black horror of destruction. Picasso has three sources of light in the confined space of the painting: an eye-lamp, a lamp-lamp, and a window of a burning house. Yellow, red and blue are the academic "tricolor" from which all the colors of the rainbow, all the colors of the world are born. A flower sprouts above the wreckage of the sword. Perhaps the story of the hidden color of "Guernica" is another Picasso's parable. The parable that life still conquers death in a way unknown to science. I would very much like to believe it.
It just so happened that the Spanish land gave the world many brilliant names. Some scientists, explaining this phenomenon, refer to the genetic heritage of warlike and talented tribes. Astrologers claim that powerful energy flows intersect over Spain. But we are sure that all the factors mentioned above are at work. But, nevertheless, to be an educated person and not to join the Spanish cultural heritage is simply impossible. We will help you to highlight the variety of masterpieces by Spanish painters. This article will talk about the Reina Sofia Museum, or rather about her pride, the painting "Guernica", which belongs to the brush of Pablo Picasso.
Three reasons to visit the Reina Sofia Museum
Firstly, it is impossible to say that you have been to Madrid without visiting the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum. These are the three pillars on which the outstanding history of the visual arts rests.
Secondly, the Reina Sofia Museum has the best collection of 20th century paintings. Almost all paintings either belong to the brush of Spanish artists or artists whose work and biography are closely related to Spain. This museum contains the greatest collection of Spanish avant-garde artists.
And, thirdly, only in this museum you can see the painting "Guernica" by Picasso, which, despite its venerable age, still remains the most impressive work of art of all times and peoples.
The touching genius of Pablo Picasso
His full name consists of 21 words. Just like his creative personality, there are many facets. He was born in the late 19th century, and his life and work completely changed the 20th century. The odious Pablo left his last name under paintings, sculptures, graphic works, theatrical scenery. He was known as a ceramist and designer. He always belonged to Spain, and his work began to belong to the world. His paintings at worldwide auctions beat records for the value of sales.
His whole life was associated with painting. Picasso is not an example of accidental fame, but of many years of work and work that nurtured his artistic genius. The pinnacle of Picasso's creativity was cubism. But this genre was not invented by the artist by accident. At first, Pablo experimented with color, alternating between "blue" and "pink" periods of creativity. After innovative techniques in color, the artist set out to find the perfect form. He completely rejected realism with its pictorial and cognitive function. Instead, his paintings were filled with geometric elements that were flat in themselves, but all together created a harmonious volume and three-dimensional shape.
Picasso's biography is filled with many amazing events. He was a person who deeply felt the world around him. Two wars passed by his life, which convinced the artist that peace on earth is the highest blessing. Picasso did not hide his pacifism. He hated war so much that he did not even depict it directly, only through a grid of symbols and allegories. This is how his legendary "Guernica" looks like, which has been admiring and applauding for almost 100 years.
"Guernica" as the shortest history of fascism
Picasso has always rejected the force that promotes violence. He did not succumb to the slogans of fascism. Through that more than once he was summoned for interrogation. Once, a German officer, looking at a reproduction of "Guernica", asked: - Is this your doing? - No, yours. Do not hesitate, take it as a keepsake. - Briefly answered the artist. One can only guess why the German commander left the impunity of the Spanish artist unpunished.
The painting was commissioned by the government of the Spanish Republic to participate in the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. The exhibits were to be devoted to the theme of modernity. The whole world knows about the city of Guernica in the Basque Country. This city was completely destroyed in a few hours as a result of aerial bombardment by Luftwaffe pilots. This was the time of the Spanish Civil War. Pablo had never been to this city in his life. But the news of its destruction shocked the artist. “Friends, bombs are destroying entire cities. But who will revive them from the ashes? ”The artist wrote in a letter to his friend.
"Guernica" is all the pain and horror of fascism. It depicts death, violence, despair and chilling fear. This, according to the artist, was supposed to look like a documentary shooting from the main square of Guernica during the bombing. Therefore, "Guernica" is written in black and white to be as close as possible to the newspaper chronicle. This painting is a symbol of fascist evil, grief and human cruelty.
The artist worked on it like crazy, 10 or even 12 hours a day. The next month, the painting was ready. Picasso's friends recalled that after writing it, Pablo fell ill, he was in a terrible depressed state. And after he recovered, he never became the same Picasso. The picture can be "read" for hours. Art critics to this day find new images in it and interpret them in different ways. One thing remains unchanged - this canvas is so amazing that you need to dream of seeing it at least once.
Art workers always try to reflect significant world events in their works, to express their attitude towards them. The genius of his time, the Spanish abstractionist Pablo Picasso, created more than 20 thousand works in his life. One of his masterpieces was able to blow up the consciousness of people, induce society to protest.
What event is depicted in the painting "Guernica"
In 1937, sunny Spain was captured by the civil war. General Franco tried to bring about a military dictatorship. He was supported by fascist Germany and Portugal. On April 26, 1937, the city of Guernica was attacked by German planes. The city was hit by bombs, the average weight of which was 40 tons. Soldiers of the Republican army and civilians were killed. The historic center of the Basque Country was completely destroyed. The bombing of Guernica confirmed Germany's participation in the civil war. The event shocked the inhabitants of Europe, being reflected in the works of many creators.
At this time, Pablo Picasso was in Paris. The Master has never been to Guernica. The incident shocked and angered the artist. He immediately set about creating a masterpiece.
Description of the painting by Pablo Picasso "Guernica"
The question is who created the painting "Guernica" , does not arise. The unique handwriting of the genius is immediately recognizable: "Guernica" is painted in oil in the style of Cubism. The work is done in black and white, occupies a canvas measuring 349 × 776 cm.
The canvas is a triptych: three semantic fragments are clearly drawn from chaotic figures.
The action of the picture takes place in a closed, dark room, reminiscent of a basement. The only light source is a lamp that resembles eyes. In the center of the canvas there is a dying horse with a hand with a lamp stretched out to its face. A soldier lies under the feet of the animal. His body is mutilated, his hand grips a sword shard and a flower. On the hands of a soldier, you can see the stigmata - a symbol of the murder of an innocent. A woman reaches for the soldier's body. Her body is crippled, her gaze is directed to the lamp.
On the left, kneeling is a screaming mother, in whose arms a dead child. She looks up, an expression of horror and pain on her face, her mouth open. The character on the right, raising his hands, begs for help. He stands in flames at the closed black door. There is no chance to escape. When you first look at the painting, you can immediately see the bull (the symbol of the Spanish Civil War). Behind him you can see a frightened white dove (a symbol of peace).
We are witnessing a terrible tragedy. The pain just leaves the picture, striking the very heart. Agony, chaos, powerlessness, hopelessness, human suffering are visible at first glance, but their cause is invisible.
All images in Picasso's painting are symbols. What is depicted on the canvas "Guernica", everyone decides for himself. Cubism and the symbolism of images leave us room for our own thoughts. The main thing that the artist wanted to express with his masterpiece was a protest against violence and war.
History of creation
Upon learning of the tragedy, the artist immediately set to work. According to the friends of the master, the impression was that the concept of "Guernica" was always in his head. Picasso created a huge canvas in a month. The artist worked for 12 hours.
For the first time "Guernica" was presented to the audience in the Spanish pavilion at the World Art Exhibition (Paris). The general audience did not accept the genius's masterpiece in the way the author had planned. During the first days "Guernica" saw only the backs of the visitors of the exhibition. Too strong emotional message, heavy thoughts scared people away, forced to hide their eyes. Many assessed the painting as propaganda and a political manifesto, not perceiving the images in the painting as a protest against violence.
The picture has been exhibited in many museums around the world. Picasso wanted his brainchild to be exhibited in the Prado Museum when democracy came to the country. And so it happened. The painting has long been in the historical homeland of the creator. In the 90s, "Guernica" settled in the Museum of Madrid, where it is now.
It is impossible to deny a strong message, a deep thought, a vivid protest. The canvas will always be relevant while people are at war, wreaking havoc and pain around. How do you understand the symbolism of the painting "Guernica"?
Category URGENT, TODAY, WRITE AN ESSAY READING, EXPLAIN HOW YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORD "A Pity" AT LEAST 50 WORDS (1) Early in the morning, when Seryozhka went out for bread,there was not a soul in the yard. (2) There was no one to chat with, so Syroezh-kin decided to go to the farthest bakery: maybe he would meet someone or see something amusing. (H) Seryozhka walked slowly under the shady lime trees. (4) From the outside, one might think that he was concerned about something and he was immersed in his thoughts. (5) But what kind of thoughts are these? (6) So, the game: I want everything around to be even better, more interesting, more significant. (7) Here are trees planted, yesterday they were not yet. (B) Thin, quite sticks, and no leaves. (9) But nothing! (Yu) Soon they will gain strength, they will rustle in the wind ... (11) But the bulldozers have heaped up a lot of earth: they are leveling the site. (12) Until the shaft is removed, it is convenient to hide here. (13) And then, probably, they will plant bushes, put sports equipment ... (14) Below, across the river, the bowl of the stadium is visible. (15) Seryozhka looks at her, but sees not the stadium, but the official walls of the Roman Colosseum. (16) Now he is not a high school student, he is a brave gladiator. (17) He is not wearing pants and a jacket, but forged armor. (18) He must grapple with tigers and lions and hit them with his sword in order to stay alive ... (19) No, let the stadium be better not a Colosseum, but a synchrophasotron! (20) Yes, yes, this is what it is, the synchrophasotron - a round, like a circus, bulk, inside which the particles that make up the atomic nucleus are carried. (21) And now Seryozhka is not just a student - he is a physicist! (22) So he takes photographic plates and begins to ponder what are the tracks on them ... (23) Suddenly a sunbeam flares up, and Seryozhka forgets that a minute ago he was a physicist. (24) The walls of the Kremlin darken in the distance, and they are guarded on the high bank by the archer Syroezhkin. (25) Here comes a tall old man with a stick. (26) Yes, this is Ivan the Terrible himself! (27) What order will he give to his warrior? (28) Grozny paused and calmly asked: - (29) Tell me, buddy, how to get to the Million Little Things store? - (ZO) I-I don't know, - Seryozhka stammered in confusion. - (31) That is what I am! .. (32) I know! (ЗЗ) At first, constantly straight ahead, then to the left. - (34) Thank you, - said the old man, not at all surprised. (35) And he went. (Zb) Slowly. (37) Calm down. (38) And not at all like Ivan the Terrible. (39) It's a pity. write an essay reasoning as you understand "A Pity"
Here's the assignment:
As you understand the proverbs: "The eye sees, but the tooth doesn’t." ", "Small spool but precious" ? Come up with a short story based on one of these proverbs.
HELP!
2) what episodes of the story made a particularly strong impression on you? Why?
3) Why did Vasya become so attached to his new friends? What qualities did Vasya manifest in his attitude towards his friends?
4) What kind of relationship has developed between children and parents in the family of the judge and in the family of Tyburtia? Why?
5) What can be said about Tyburtsia, judging by his attitude towards Vasya's father, Vasya and his m children?
6) What was hidden behind the outward severity of father Vasya? Who understood him more correctly: Vasya or Valek and Tyburtsy? Prove it?
Help me please..!
As you understand the words of Belinsky "Pushkin, according to Belinsky," belongs to an eternally living and moving phenomenon that does not stop at thatthe point at which their death caught them, but continuing to develop in the consciousness of society. Each era pronounces its judgment about them, and no matter how correctly it understood them, it will always leave the next era to say something new and more true ... "Do you agree with them? Do they help to comprehend the significance of the poet's work for the development of Russian literature?"
1. You met in grades 5 and 6 with several works by N. A. Nekrasov. Name them. What are these works about? What worries the poet? What does he want?to draw the attention of readers?
2. What is the theme of the poem "Grandfather" Who is its main character and what is the story of his life Who served as its prototype in part What do you know about the Decembrists and their fates?
3. Why didn't Sasha's parents want to tell him about his grandfather?
4.With what words did grandfather enter the house What did they mean? How did grandfather look? Why does Nekrasov pay attention to grandfather's gray hair, to his joy from what he saw, the nature surrounding the estate, to his tears?
5. As you understand the lines Soon it will not be difficult for you, you will be a free people! "
6. What a grandfather's story confirms his confidence that "The will and labor of man are wondrous divas!"
7. What did the grandfather tell about the excesses of the clerks, officials, landowners How he calls the clerks, officials Who "rooted" for the Fatherland What, in his opinion, can bring victory over slavery, money-grubbing, darkness What does he see real grief How do you understand the drains " Remember that there are no irresistible grievances in the world "
8. What did the grandfather do What did he sing about and why did his grandson find it so interesting? What is the ending of the poem How does Sasha understand the attitude of his grandfather to life, to people, to the history of Russia?
Pablo Picasso
On the square of Madrid, named after Pablo Picasso, there is a monument made of pink granite. The inscription on it reads “Residents of Madrid in memory of Pablo Ruiz Picasso - the Spanish genius of world art. May 1980 "
You can know a lot about the "blue" and "pink" periods of Picasso's work, you can treat his works differently. But everyone remembers his famous dove, painted by the artist in 1947 and since then has flown around the entire planet as a symbol of peace. And everyone knows his equally famous painting "Guernica", which Picasso painted a decade earlier - in 1937.
By this time, the artist had left noisy Paris, moved to the town of Tremblay near Versailles and lived there very secluded. He painted large night still lifes with a candle burning near the window, books, flowers and butterflies flying into the fire. A thirst for peace and a kind of hymn to the silence of the night were guessed in them. But events in the world have dramatically changed the artist's solitary life.
In 1937, all of Europe followed the Spanish Civil War with intense attention. There, on the outskirts of Barcelona and Madrid, in the Iberian mountains and on the coast of Biscay, her fate was decided. In the spring of 1937, the rebels launched an offensive, and on April 26, the German Condor squadron carried out a night raid on the small town of Guernica, located near Bilbao - in the Basque Country.
This small town with 5,000 inhabitants was sacred to the Basques - the indigenous population of Spain, it preserved the rarest monuments of its ancient culture. The main attraction of Guernica is the "guernikako arbola", the legendary oak (or, as it is also called, the government tree). At its foot, the first liberties were once proclaimed - the autonomy granted to the Basques by the Madrid royal court. Under the crown of an oak tree, the kings swore an oath to the Basque parliament - the first in Spain - to respect and defend the independence of the Basque people. For several centuries, only for this purpose they specially came to Guernica.
But the Franco regime took away this autonomy. There was no military need for an air raid, the fascists wanted to inflict a "psychological blow" on the enemy, and the barbaric bombing was carried out. German and Italian aviation not only acted with the knowledge of Franco, but also at his personal request. And they destroyed Guernica ...
This event was the impetus for Pablo Picasso to create a great work. The Spanish poet and prominent public figure Rafael Alberti later recalled: "Picasso never visited Guernica, but the news of the destruction of the city struck him like a blow of a bull's horn."
The pace of the painting seems incredible. And the dimensions of this canvas are simply colossal: 3.5 meters in height and about 8 meters in width. And Picasso wrote it in less than a month. International journalist A. Medvedenko said that the artist “worked frantically, like a madman ... During the first days, Picasso stood at the easel for 12-14 hours. The work progressed so rapidly that one involuntarily got the impression that he had long thought over the picture in the smallest detail and detail. "
Convulsively distorted figures rush about on a huge black-white-gray canvas, and the first impression of the painting was chaotic. But for all the impression of violent chaos, the composition of "Guernica" is strictly and precisely organized.
The general concept of the painting was already outlined in the first sketches, and the first version of it was roughly completed almost in the very first days of working on canvas. Immediately, the main images were determined: a torn horse, a bull, a defeated horseman, a mother with a dead child, a woman with a lamp. The catastrophe takes place in a cramped space, as if in an underground with no way out. And Picasso managed to portray the almost impossible: agony, anger, despair of people who survived the catastrophe. But how to "picturesquely" depict the suffering of people, their unpreparedness for sudden death and a threat rushing from the sky? How to show an event in its unthinkable reality, its terrible general meaning? And with all this, how to express the power of compassion, anger and pain of the artist himself?
And this is the path that Picasso chooses to comprehensively portray the tragedy that was being played out. First of all, the plot and composition of the picture are based not on the development of a real event, but on the associative links of artistic images. All construction and rhythm of this huge canvas correspond to its inner semantic movement. All images of the picture are conveyed in a simplified manner, with generalizing strokes. Only that which cannot be dispensed with is drawn, which directly enters into the content of the picture - everything else is discarded. In the faces of the mother and the man, facing the viewer, only a mouth wide open in screaming, visible openings of the nostrils, moved somewhere above the forehead of the eye, are left. No individuality, but the details would be superfluous here, could fragment and thereby narrow the general idea. Pablo Picasso created a tragic feeling of death and destruction through the agony of the artistic form itself, which tears objects into hundreds of small fragments.
Next to a mother, holding a dead child with her head thrown back, is a bull with an expression of gloomy indifference. Everything around perishes, only the bull rises above the defeated, staring in front of him a motionless, dull gaze. This contrast of suffering and indifference was in the first sketches for "Guernica" almost the main support of the whole picture. But Picasso did not stop there, and on the right side of the picture (next to the man who threw his hands up) two human faces soon appeared - alarmed, tense, but with features undistorted, beautiful and full of determination. A woman with the profile of an ancient goddess rushes into the underground from somewhere above, as if from another world. In her thrown forward hand, she holds a burning lamp, her mouth is also wide open in a scream, but there is no one to hear it.
What is going on in Picasso's Guernica? Not bombing the city from planes: there are no bombs in the picture, nor the city itself. Tongues of fire are visible in the picture, but it is somewhere in the distance, outside the canvas. Then why do people and animals perish? Who drove them into the trap?
The direct bearer of evil in the picture is not personified, the dictator Franco and Hitler themselves, “these riders on a pig with a louse on the banner,” are too insignificant to be its only reason. Created on the basis of Spanish events, Guernica went beyond specific historical and time frames, anticipating events that did not even have a name at that time. Subsequently, the personification of fascism began to be seen in the image of a bull, to which a dying horse draws its dying curse. The genius of light also cries out to him in vain: the bull does not heed anything and is ready to trample everything in its path. Other art critics (for example, ND Dmitrieva) suggested that, perhaps, the bull is not the bearer of evil will, but only ignorance, misunderstanding, deafness and blindness.
In June 1937, Guernica was exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair in Paris, and crowds of people immediately flocked here. However, what appeared to their eyes confused many and caused a variety of controversies. The reaction of many was not at all what P. Picasso had hoped for. The famous French architect Le Corbusier, who was present at the opening of the Spanish pavilion, later recalled: "Guernica saw mainly the backs of visitors." However, not only ordinary visitors to the exhibition were not prepared to perceive the picture, in such a peculiar form, telling about the horrors of war. Not all experts accepted "Guernica": some critics denied the painting in art, calling the canvas a "propaganda document", others tried to limit the content of the picture only to the framework of a specific event and saw in it only an image of the tragedy of the Basque people. And the Madrid magazine "Sabado Graphics" even wrote: "Guernica is a huge canvas - terrible. Perhaps this is the worst thing that Pablo Picasso has created in his life. "
Subsequently, Pablo Picasso, speaking about the fate of his brainchild, remarked: "What has not happened to me to hear about my" Guernica "from both friends and enemies." However, there were more friends. Dolores Ibarruri, for example, immediately praised Picasso's painting: "Guernica" is a terrible accusation against fascism and Franco. She mobilized and raised the peoples, all men and women of goodwill to fight. If Pablo Picasso in his life did not create anything but "Guernica", he could still be ranked among the best artists of our era. " The Danish cartoonist Herluf Bidstrup considered Guernica the most significant anti-war work. He wrote: “People of my generation remember well how the Nazis bombarded the city of Guernica with a sadistic bombardment during the Spanish Civil War. The artist showed the brutal face of war, the reflection of that terrible reality in abstract forms, and it is still in our anti-war arsenal. "
And although "Guernica" by Picasso is silent, as people who are frozen in front of her are silent, it still seems that you can hear screams, groans, crackling, the whistle of falling bombs and the deafening roar of explosions. For the Spanish republicans, the painting was a symbol of pain, anger and revenge. And they went into battle, carrying with them, like a banner, a reproduction of "Guernica".
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