Pablo Picasso "Gernika". Description of the picture
Spanish abstractionist Pablo Picasso acutely reacted to social problems, reflecting a look at them in his work. One of his most famous works is "Gernik." This picture reflects the artist's worldview, its vision of the world is expressed and the attitude towards the events occurring around it.
History of creation
Picture Pablo Picasso "Gernika" became a manifesto against cruelty and violence. In encrypted the history of Europe, the times of the civil war and reflect the suffering of the whole world. The reason for creating a picture was the bombardment by the fascists of the Spanish Town of the eponymous. "Gernik" Picasso contains archetypical symbols and images. They reflect the spirit of modernity.
One of the most important masterpieces of the 20th century, "Gernik" Picasso, was created by the author in the rustling of creative madness. He was so amazed that he had created a canvas with an incredible energy, fascinating and frightening, as well as the events that occurred in the Basque town on April 26, 1937. The bombing of fascist aviation destroyed the city by 70% and claimed the lives over 1500 people.
Picasso worked over the picture almost continuously and completed it for the month. Many of his friends periodically observed work and left their comments. For the first time, the finished result was introduced at the World Exhibition. Some of the most valuable photos of "Guerniki" Picasso - pictures made by the artist's companion. They told the world stages of work on the picture.
"Gernik" Picasso: Description
"GERNIK" is written by oil and is a cloth-fresco of 3.5 m in height and 7.8 m wide. Initially, it was planned to make a picture of color, but from this she lost its oppressive atmosphere. The monochromicity of the color solution is due to the desire of the author to portray the dead city, immersed in darkness. Many critics note the similarity of the image with newspaper clippings of the time and call the "propaganda weapon".
Picture P. Picasso "Gernika" depicts scenes of suffering, violence, chaos, hopelessness, powerlessness and death. People and animals depicted in the picture are crippled and married, their eyes are full of horror, and the mouths are opened in a dark cry. Buildings in the image are destroyed or covered by flames.
Stylistics painting
"Grannik" can be called a graphic panel. Eyewitnesses argue that Picasso worked as an obsessed, which was expressed in the style of writing the picture. The lines are moving from smooth, blurred and rounded, as if the flame languages, to sharp and clear, as broken glass and fragments of shells. The main task of the graphic element was the reflection of such emotions as fear, horror, anger and despair. Picasso drawing is thoroughly accurate. Avoiding detail, it allocates only important characters and allegories.
In the creation of the painting, the means of artistic expressiveness and stylistic techniques borrowed from cubism and surrealism are used. To increase the expression of the black and white image, the artist used the laying of colors, the intersection of lines, played with shadows and shades of gray.
Composition
By the location of objects, the canvas resembles Triptych - a picture consisting of three independent parts connected to one unit. If visually divided by "hennik" into three parts, each of them can exist separately, while maintaining its own composition and semantic load.
All what is happening is concluded within the room. In the upper left corner of the picture depicted bull. Under it is a woman, she mourns her dead-child child. To the right of the bull, a little behind, the bird trembles, similar to the pigeon.
In the center of the composition there is a horse. Her pose and look looks like it beats in agony and is about to fall out. Many note that her nose and widely open mouth form something similar to the human skull. In the legs of a horse in an unnatural pose lies a soldier, spreading his hands wide. In one of them, he holds a flower and a swallow of a sword. Over the head of the horse, the lantern or lamp in the form of the right through an open window into the room floats a face similar to an antique mask. In hand it holds a burning candle and looks in horror about what is happening. Just below - a woman in rags moves to the center, her eyes pointing up. If the paintings could sound, we would hear a bull shrill, horses and women with a child. It is personified their languages \u200b\u200bin the form of sharp daggers.
On the right, the artist portrayed a man who looked up to the sky in despair. Around him fire, he is no longer to get out. The black wall with the door completes the right edge of the picture.
Symbolism
"Herront" Picasso speaks in the language of characters. It is full of mysteries and allegory, and each image carries a certain meaning. The main colors in which the picture is made - black, gray and white. They can accordingly mean death, ash and grave savan.
The key figures in the picture are according to the most common point of view, the bull personifies the rootless and indifference, thanks to which there may be such things as war and fascism. Some believe that he, on the contrary, personifies the Triumph of Spain, and the horse is her suffering. The artist himself argued that the bull is a symbol of cruelty, and the horse is the people. Later he said that both animals mean the sacrifice. Also, the bull refers us to the image of a minotaur as a symbol of a devastating bearer.
The eye shaped lamp is not in vain is the semantic center of the picture. It, on the one hand, means a certain force that cannot be resolved, and on the other, the space around the light of hope is illuminated. Not in vain in despair, the shapes in the picture thrust the heads, look up with empty eyes and extend to the sky.
The pigeon beating in convulsions is obviously personifies the war. The bird of the world also froze, spreading the wings, raised her head up and opened the beak in the scream.
On the palms of the dead soldier you can see stigmates. Picasso was not religious. By this symbol, he wanted to show suffering without visible reasons. Like Christ, people are sometimes forced to suffer because someone decided for them that it should be so. So I suffered from the Spanish people by the will of the fascists.
Woman with a candle - image of a man observing from the side. Her eyes express a dumb molub to stop cruelty.
Fate picture
"Gernika" always caused disputes and contradictory reviews. Someone called her the last masterpiece Picasso, someone, on the contrary, did not consider her artistically valuable, called only anti-fascist proclamation. During the first exhibition, the picture did not make a proper impression on the audience. In this "stunned" canvase, they saw only the similarity of political manifesto and the tragedy of one small town, without realizing the idea of \u200b\u200bprotest against universal cruelty.
At the beginning of World War II, Gestapovians came to Picasso's house. On the table, they saw a postcard with the reproduction of "Gerniki". To the question, whether he did, Picasso replied: "You made you ..." It is not known what could turn into an artist for the artist, if not a German sculptor Henri Brecker, who helped solve this problem, patronizing artists living on That moment in France.
On June 4, 1937, "Gernika", according to Picasso, was worthy of being in the Madrid Prado Museum. There she was exhibited in 1981-1992, after which he was transported to the Museum of St. Sophia, where it is to this day.
As a monument of despair and destruction, "Gernik" on the strength of exposure bears the creative mission. Like a woman shown on her with a candle in her hand, she calls people to look deep into themselves and discover the light there. Depicting chaos and pain, painting is a call to fold the weapon. Thus, the chief masterpiece Picasso is a broad sense of manifesto in the name of peace and humanity.
In the Moscow branch of the Institute of Cervantes, the exhibition "Gernik: Spain 1937 - Moscow 2017" is held. Three dozen artists from Russia, Spain and Latin America turned to the famous Pablo Picasso painting in connection with the 80th anniversary of its appearance. Head of the Culture Department of the Institute of Cervantes Tatiana Pigarleva told about the creation and reading of "Gerniki".
Pablo Picasso wrote "Grannik" - a canvas of 3.5 by 7.8 m - for 33 days. He was then 55 years old. In fact, the "earthly life passed to half" (Dante considered the "half" of its way 35, the figures rhymes), Picasso creates its main picture. As "Don Quixote" was born out of the plan of parody stories, and "Gernik" was to become no more than masterpiece Agitprop. But once in the conversation, Dante was wined, remember his idea of \u200b\u200ba "multiple-free" interpretation of poetry from the letter to Kangranda della the rock: interpretations of the historical, moral, allegorical and "anagogic" (sublime). From the reality of the first plan to the realities of the "highest order". "Gernik" clearly deserves Dante's optics.
Dora Maar
Historical interpretation
In January 1937, the Government of the Spanish Republic orders Picasso monumental work for the pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, which should 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 "leads" the museum at a distance, but is very proud of the title. For the pavilion of the warring country (whose main task is to declare the viability of the republic and collect funds for the People's Army) Picasso participation is the most important visor. Spanish Parisian never wrote political paintings (the pigeon of the world will be born in 1949, "flying out" from "Gernik"), but the order takes. And also fee. Republicans talk about the "gift" Picasso, which only paid for canvas and paints. Later, a real figure will be published: 150,000 francs, 15% of the value of the entire Pavilion of Spain, 9 times more than Picasso received for the most expensive work from previously sold.
For four months, the artist who is in the creative crisis does not write anything. And here the story was intervened, more precisely - on the contrary. April 26, on Monday, the German Legion aircraft "Condor", the Allies of Franco, within three and a half hours bombed a peaceful city. Gernik - a symbol of traditional freedoms of the Basque people (under the local oak of the Kings of Spain brought the oath of freedom to respect) - it becomes the horror symbols of the war of the twentieth century. "Only five whole houses remained in Gernik," not visited by the world of tragedy "- Paris newspapers are filled with such headlines. Figures of the dead fluctuate from 200 people to a thousand. Everything, of course, relatively. Tragically relative. Herront compared to the Holocaust and Hiroshima Mala, but in this first in the history of Europe, the bombing of a peaceful city was a special symbolic heat. After all, the victim of Christ is statistically small compared to Attila's slaughterhouses or Genghis Khan.
In the art historical texts about Gernik, the same mistake is repeated: the government of the republic has not ordered a picture of the tragedy of Gerns, the order was received four months before the bombardment, and the topic was not stipulated. But Gernik, as Rafael Alberti recalled, "Picasso struck like a bovine horns." She became a catalyst, an explosion, who knocked out Picasso from the crisis - to work. On May 1, the first sketch appears: bull, wounded horse, woman with lamp in hand. Conventionality. Details of sketches vary. Then from the wound on the side of the horse crashes the winged Pegasus, and the horse himself will be written away from pain, he is hit by the hooves of the wounded warrior, it turns into a donutrician horse (no wonder it is in these years the Picasso dreams "write as a child"), then stands up with frightening ruffle. The bull is a formidable appearance, then extensively frozen, then completely human, with large sad eyes. On the first day of the sketches, only five, the pace of work increases in the rhythm crescendo.In addition to the original Trinity, the prostrate bodies of the warrior and a woman, sobbing mother with a dead child appear. Picasso himself said that he wrote this work in the "state of trance", without stopping, at 14 o'clock a day. "I did not let out of the hands of a brush, like republican soldiers - guns," he admits in one of the interviews. May 9 dated the first sketch of the whole composition. On May 11, Mahar, Muza Picasso, the times of "Gerniki", photographs the first composition on canvas - in the new workshop on Rue des Grands Augustin, 7. Her pictures will form eight phases of work on the picture - and this photo series will become a unique testimony: the monument of the evolution of the idea and the birth of the masterpiece.
In the first photo in the center of the composition, the raised fist of the wounded - but the solemn - soldier, the visual metaphor of the Republican slogan NO PASARÁN ("They won't pass"). The action takes place on the square, the flames covered the house, the body of the victims were mixed, a frightened woman faces the killed, a burning woman with open hands falls out of the window. Everything flies, runs and crumbles. In the second snapshot in the muscular fist of the soldier arises with a sheaf of Kohliyev, and behind him - the rising sun. But as the frontal political statements are working, the poster language, leave the picture. On the place of the Sun is now a mysterious lamp-eye with sharp rays, the position of the dead soldier changes: the fist is omitted, and the body with stretch hands is rather sends to crucifixion. Dead woman disappears, triangles, building ancient frieze with antique clarity, increasingly appear in the composition. Bull moves from the center into an angle, curling away by a semir around a woman with a dead child. And on the spot of the chopped tree (the only straight line - and very quickly disappeared - references to the specifics of gerns) there is an angle of the table with a wounded bird. The action moves inside the room - more precisely, the symbolic, broken indoor space, - where the door is open to the side, the floor is drawn (or the tile, or a map of hostilities), and time froze.
In the art historical texts about Gernik, the same mistake is repeated: the government of the republic has not ordered a picture of the tragedy of Gerns, the order was received four months before the bombardment, and the topic was not stipulated.
Picasso until the latter tried to enter the elements of the color to his work: she stuck red tears, from wallpaper and motley paper crusted the dress to three women (burning, running and sobbing over the child). Red-gold robe sobbing moved to collage "Femmes à leur toilette", Which now decorates the residence of the Ambassador of France in Madrid (looking at this work, you realize that Dudena Guernika will save the masterpiece from Dunovkussia). A running woman with naked buttocks in the first stages of work in the hand was depicted a piece of toilet paper - this physiological science sent to a series of grotesque satirical engravings "Sleep and France Franco", which Picasso finished at the same time. In one of the latest versions of Gerns, instead of drawn paper, a piece of paper is present - glued to the left hand. Closer to the final there are only fragments of color - red tears on the cheek of the running and wound on the neck of the Dead Child. In June, the delegation of the Republican government inspects the work. With them, Picasso ripped from the canvas the last splashes of the collage: red scraps of paper, tear and wound. Everyone was shaken. "We saw how Gernik found an amazing restraint, a decent monastic restraint of an escorial, but immersed in the horror of chaos," recalled one of those present.
The name "Gernik" also originated only in the work finale. Here the versions are diverged. Someone claims that the Picasso's workshop visited the Delegation of Basque politicians and exclaimed one of them: "It's the same Gernik!" Other witnesses assure that the name suggested Paul Elur, who just wrote the poem "Victoire de Guernica", or Christian Survos, editor-in-chief of the magazine Cahiers D "ArtBy order of which Dor Mahar photographed the stages of work. It is important that from a particular historical plot Picasso in the process of work deliberately moves, but the name is extremely spectacular - agrees, creating the soil for subsequent disagreements and disputes.
Dora Maar
Disputes began as soon as on June 4, the work left the workshop and ranked his place in the main hall of the Pavilion of Spain. Particularly persistent Marxists demanded to remove this "cubist something." Louis Aragon complained that an excessive tendency to the avant-garde deprived the work of the "semantic effectiveness of socialism." The reaction of the public was ambiguous. Le Corbusier, who was present at the opening of the pavilion, wrote: "Gernika" saw basically back of visitors, she seemed to be repulsed. " Time asks the prism of perception. In 1937, peaceful Europe wanted to see another: progress, triumph of technology, a bright future, which had not yet turned the gaping heights that Picasso had served in her "gerbers". The press enthusiasbly wrote about the pavilions of Germany and the USSR (the latter was crowned with the "workers and a collective farmer"), and the Pavilion of Spain - built by Outstanding architects Luis Lakasoy and José Louis Sutt (the latest sign of the CRANT will be the Foundation of Johan Miro in Barcelona) - not even mentioned in Catalog "Main Exhibition Objects".
Particularly persistent Marxists demanded to remove this "cubist something."
After Paris "Gernika" will go to the world tour of England, Scandinavia, the United States, and then acquire a temporary residence - "Before the onset of Democracy in Spain," like Picasso, - in New York Moma.. From the beginning of the 1970s, the return of the painting is discussed. Franco, as claimed, was not against. But Picasso, as expected, did not agree. After a long negotiations (daughter Picasso demanded that abortions and divorces first allowed in Spain) on September 10, 1981, "Gernik" arrived in Spain on board Boeing "Lope de Vega". Epic play was near the final. On October 25, on the day of the century since the birth of Picasso, a new exposition has opened in Prado - in Cason del Ben-Retro, the branch of the museum: "Gernik" and dozens of sketches. The picture of the first years was hidden behind the bulletproof glass, gendarmes were on duty near her. Dolores Ibarrury - Chairman of the Communist Party of Spain - in the next flame speech will put a point in history: "The war is completed. The last exile arrived at home. " In 1992, Gernik will move from Prado to the center of the arts of Queen Sofia and will become its main, sign exhibit. Now two caretaker guard it from photographers.
Moral interpretation
When the world survived the horrors of the Second World War, the prophetic meaning of "Gerniki" found a new sound. The title of "main anti-war masterpiece of the twentieth century" sounds formally, but reflects the essence. In the context of Spanish art, Picasso's masterpiece stood in a row with "delivering nonsense" Velasquez and "execution of May 3" Goya. Miguel Sugasy's dream, Director Prado until March 2017, was the creation of the "Hall of the World" in Salon de Reinos, the second branch of the museum, the competition for the reconstruction of which was recently completed. There, on the project, Sugas was to be located all three masterpieces (especially since the "delivery of nonsense" for Salon de Rosin was written). In the layout of the Competition of the Norman Foster and Carlos Rubio, the dream of the director Prado (as well as the will of Picasso himself, which has repeatedly emphasized Sugas) was embodied. Such a "attempt on a masterpiece" gave rise to a scandal between museums, the King of Spain assured that "Gernika" will not leave the center of the arts of Queen Sofia, and Sugas soon resigned. Fiasco with the "Hall of the World" was one of the reasons.
"Delivery of nonsense" was written in 1635, 300 years before the "Guerniki". Justin Nassau, Governor of Bredi, 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 "duddy" role of the event was paramount), hands the keys to the city of the commander-in-chief of the Spaniards Ambrosio Spinole. In this era, the war is the main thing. Yes, in the depths of the picture smoke the battlefield, but also the winners, and the defeated writes were written by Velasquez with the degree of respect and deseparation, as on the other pictures of aristocrats and jesters. The Spaniards won, but Spinola does not allow the governor to go down to his knees. Velasquez writes not horror slaughter, but the nobility of a true victory. The world has not yet lost integrity, the war is still worthy of a parade portrait. Goya War is already revealed as a metaphysical evil. The vile "Caprician" and the "Disaster War" soldiers are the same demonic ruined. The ranks of the French who kill the Madrid rebels in the "execution of May 3" merge into a faceless Multi-Room monster. But behind the hill Princepe Pio, where the atrocities are happening, the palaces and the churches of Madrid will still come. The world's matter is alive, the evil is transient. Fearless man in a white shirt throws hands. This is a crucifixion triumph, but this is a celebration. "Gernika" Picasso - tragic and incredible insight - and warning to mankind. The ahead of the time, that metaphysical horror, which browsing the second world, Hiroshima, all those coming slaughter and terrorist attacks, which inevitably turn out to be in the field of attraction "Gerniki". It's not cubism and not surrealism: it is chaos, it is the death of the matter itself.
The woman who falls in Gernik from the burning house, the hands are thickened in the same way as the hero in the white shirt in the "execution" of Goya (in the sketches of Picasso, several times change the position of her hands and stops on an explicit quotation). Many write about it. But no one paid attention to the fact that the bull in "Gendle" is bent just like a horse in the "delivering nonsense" Velasquez. On the left flank at "Gerniki" - Goya, on the right - Velasquez. Perhaps this is an accident. But the three tragedies of war - even if they did not meet in the "Hall of the World" - in the minds of the world are inseparable.
Allegorical interpretation
Interpretations and versions of the interpreters of "Gerniki" are enough for a whole multi-voiced chorus, which goes into a cavosophony. What does the horse mean? The horse is a bloody victim; No - this is the people who dropped aristocrat riders; No - this is an allegory of Frankism and nothing else; No - this is an allegory of a woman who was seduced and pierced by the sword of betrayal; Yes, there is no Spain itself! Oaky, Spain is a bull! No, bull - forces evil, world evil, fascism! Exactly the opposite: he is a woman defender with a child, he is power. Yes, this is Minotavr, Macho, Picasso himself, self-portrait, is it really not clear! Wait, a self-portrait is a bust of the warrior, Picasso adored antiquity. No, the warrior is Torrero - this is a soldier of the republic - this is a destroyed civilization. Nothing like that, destroyed civilization is a house on fire. No, this is a wounded bird. Bird is a saving America! We are mistaken, everything is much simpler: this is a pigeon from Merced Square in Malaga, the childhood of the artist passed there. Are you sketches not seen? This is the transformation of Pegasus, which flew out of the horse's wound in early versions! Wait: She has broken wing, she is a victim of bombing! So where is the bird in general? I do not see it ...
For ideological struggle in the picture lacked clarity. Picasso to all questions about the symbolism of the characters answered that he had already said to the paints and words of unnecessary.
With the allegorical complexity of the painting at first, the Republicans tried to fight. Juan Larrea, Poet and friend Picasso, even wrote to him in 1947. The official letter was "confirmed one-way" that the wounded horse is a symbol of agonizing Frankism (imagine Florence, which requests from Dante written confirmation that the lion at the entrance to hell This is the republic, but Lynx - Papal Kuria).
For ideological struggle in the picture lacked clarity. For eternity - more than enough. Picasso to all questions about the symbolism of the characters answered that he had already said to the paints and words of unnecessary. The multiplicity of the allegory does not overshadow, but only enriches the meaning.
The semantic field "Gerniki" accommodates all searches for Picasso: "Avignon girls" and scenes of the Corrida, "Minotavromahi" and "Crucifix", the triangular compositions of the blue period and sharp cubism angles. With all the total novelty in "Gernik" you can find otzvuki "Scary Court" Michelangelo, "Comments on the Apocalypse" Beat Faima, Mozaik Ravenna, Romanesque painting, paintings, paintings Baldung Green, "Crucifixes" Pordenone and "Horror of War" Rubens (there and a woman with Raised hands, and mother with a dead baby, and a man's lying NIC, and Venus, stretching the garbage almost the same as the "mask" with a lamp). It is clearly involved in the allegoric choir and Picasso's personal life. In the period of work on "Gernik", he is still married to Olga Khokhlova, but the young Marie Teres Walter has just gave him the daughter of Maya, and the New Muse Mahar is actively involved in working on the picture. And here is a bull (something like Self-portraits Picasso) looks like a woman falling out of a burning house, and on a woman with a child, and on the "mask", illuminating the path. Yes, and this Bull Minotaur is located quite like Velasquez in Meninic. But what on the turnover of the canvas? It remains to be peering.
Anagogical interpretation
Chatting with an eloir field in the legendary cafe Les Deux Magots. On Saint-Germain Square, Picasso saw a woman in white gloves playing with a knife. She dropped him vertically on the palm opened on the table. The edge then fell between your fingers, then he dug in the hand. Picasso raised a glove glove as a gift. So they got acquainted with Doro Maar. It was she who found a workshop for Picasso in the house number 7 on the street of large Augustines, a huge canvas "Gerniki" was placed there. In this studio used to meet with the Levatskaya Group Contre-Attaque Under the leadership of Georges Batha, the beloved of which Dor Mahar was before meeting with Picasso. The history of this dating is described by many biographers. But for the fullness of the picture, I look through the biography of Bat, and suddenly an incredible detail: the very attic, "headquarters" Contre-Attaque, Balzac was described in the "unknown masterpiece." Incredible, impossible coincidence! So, "Gernika" was created where Balzac placed the action of the story in which in 1831 predicted the birth of avant-garde painting, describing the portrait of the "beautiful nuazeza" - "erratic combination of smears, outlined by many strange lines that form a fence from paints ... chaos The paints, tones, indefinite shades forming a certain shapeless nebula, "what remained from the masterpiece, over which the character of Balzak, a brilliant artist Franchifer, worked for 10 years. I ask Paris friends to send a photo at home. On the facade - a memorial plan: "Picasso lived here from 1936 to 1955. In this workshop, he wrote "hennik". In the same house, Balzac placed the action of his story "an unknown masterpiece". "
Dora Maar
Blessed bicycle inventors. It turned out that the fact is well known. But few people remember the story story, history with abstraction and another important detail. The heroes of Balzak are seen in the corner of the painting "The tip of the adorable leg, a living leg" - "a fragment, survived from an incredible, slow, gradual destruction," he arises "as a torso venera in the midst of the ruins of the burned city." What do we see in the right corner of "Gerniki"? Terrible, ugly, crippled female leg. Fragment of "beautiful nuazeza" of the twentieth century. Nuazeza from "Hens". Such a coincidence cannot be an accident. In addition, Picasso illustrated the "unknown masterpiece" Balzak in 1927. Like the phrenhofer, Picasso cannot complete his masterpiece. Another years he writes "sketches" to the finished work, endless "Poskalkers", "sobbing women", "women with a dead child", even more stringent and frightening than the characters of "Gerniki". The meeting of two masterpieces - Balzak and Picasso - on the street of the big Augustines, 7 could not take place. This is a story about infinity and the incompleteness of art. About the inadvertence of ideal and incarnation, about deafness to prophecies. About the mission of the artist. About the pain of non-smoothness. About threatening chaos. About all the main thing in "Gernik".
Nevertheless, medieval scholars relevant anagogical, elevated, interpretation of texts with hope. "Gernik" is written in black and white gamma, but most viewers remember her color. This is another mystery picture. The color is alive, but it is hidden under the ash and black horror of destruction. Picasso in a closed pattern of painting three light sources: lamp-eye, candle-lamp and a window of a burning house. Yellow, red and blue - academic "three-color", from which all the colors of the rainbow are born, all the colors of the world. A flower grows over a swop chip. Perhaps the story of the hidden color "Gerniki" is another parable of Picasso. The parable that life still wins death with an unknown science in the way. I would like to believe in it.
On April 26, 1937, the Luftwaffe Division "Condor" produced a massive bombardment of the historical and cultural center of the Basque Country. The airline became the prediction of future bombing throughout Europe: it was the experiment of Herman Goring on the systematic attack of cities from the air in order to complete their complete destruction. 24 tons of bombs were reset on the hennik, most of them were incended. The city covered a fire that killed him. And with it from 200 to 1 thousand people. No one knows exactly how many people died in fire, how many destroyed bombs, how much was buried alive in the basements of their own homes.
Herront after the Luftwaffe Airplane. 1937 year
"Many of us were children then. We came to us who did not know us and whom did not know. And they did not see us as we are, because they were standing at the top, and we are downstairs. If they were next to us, all below, they would see that we were the same children that they had in the country. Perhaps, from such a height, we seemed to them ants running out of despair. We could not talk. After all, people and ants do not speak. They poured us with fire bombs and death. And destroyed our city. "
Letter of unknown eyewitness
War knocks on the house
France. 30s
Then Europe froze from horror. "Not visited by the world of tragedy" was the headline of one of the main Paris newspapers. Although even before the bombing, the attention of Europeans was attracted to Spain. Then the civil war went. Among the Republicans, sympathetic to the Communists, and the right-monarchical forces led by Francisco Franco, who were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were supported. Where there is a war, there are always war crimes. There were murders of the civilian population, there were rape, and the destruction of people in political convictions. Thousands of fraternal and nameless graves are scattered throughout Spain. The arrogance and cruelty of both sides have collapsed suffering to the whole country. But the general attention was attracted only by Gernik. Europe suddenly realized all the danger of the Nazi Military Machine: the war was already told on the door of their homes.
"Gernik" Picasso
"Gernik" 1937
"Gernik" of the Spanish Parisian Pablo Picasso becomes a symbol of the horrors of the 20th century war. According to the memoirs of the poet Raphael Alberti, the tragedy "Fucked Picasso, like a bovine horns blow." At this time in the work of the artist, the bull minotavr is keywise. It is he who appears on the first sketches with a tail in the form of a flame, symbolizing himself not that turned away Spain (Franco agreed to the bombing of Grannis), not the symbol of indifference and deafness.
Outline "Gerniki"
The work is made on canvas 349 x 776.6 cm oil. Picasso used a black and white palette: from one side - the colors of photographs from reports in newspapers, on the other, this reflects the lifelessness of the war. All events unfold in the dark room, underground. The right corner depicted a window from which a woman has just fallen. She had to do it, as the fire approached everything closer and closer. But the fire itself is not visible. Not visible those who are guilty of this fire. According to the historian of the arts of Roland Penrose, "Such an approach is a prophetic reference to the imperference of the modern war, which gives its victims less chances to learn ... whose hand bears death."
Falling woman
Woman with baby symbolizes death. In the picture, she stands on his knees with her dead baby in her arms, raising her head to the sky. And shout. Screams so that he is heard even here and now. Dagger, sticking out of her mouth, symbolizes the animal, immense pain. Then many children died in Gernik, and their mothers also stayed there, enclosed with them.
Woman with a dead child in her arms
Bird for a bull symbolizes the collapsed order. She shouts together with the mother of a child killed by a fire. Pigeon - symbol of the world. This dove is a symbol of the collapse of the world.
A woman with a lamp, according to art historians, symbolizes the antiquity of the Basque. Electric "Sun" will not replace the old way of life. The kerosene lamp in the hands of a girl is a symbol of human defenselessness. In our personal opinion, this image carries a different meaning: it seems that the woman is included with the light in this dark basement, as if trying to illuminate it with the rays of light. She is trying to understand what is happening in this dark world, carrying with him the light and rays of hope, because she came without weapons.
Woman with lamp
Down (closer to the right edge) of the central plan, we see another woman who runs from a burning house. She is an impersonation of pain, desperation of hopelessness. Her wide step speaks of trying to get out of the burning ruins, but the right foot remains squeezed in the wreckage. Her face is hampered by the rays of the light of a small lamp, but they cannot illuminate her completely.
Running woman
The lamp over the central plan symbolizes the artificial sun, technological progress, which is aimed at the destruction of people. Personally, we see an explicit analogy with the interrogation of the Gestapo. Of course, the world found out about them only a few years later, during the Second World War. But Picasso could assume that torture and inhuman interrogations of the Nazis will be overwhelmed.
The central plan takes a horse whose body falls in agony. There is a feeling that she was pierced by a sword. In the first sketches, the horse trampled the legs of the soldier, then stood as in order with a frighteningly dead ruffle. In the final version, we see almost a dead animal that falls on a dark floor. Picasso himself said that the horse in his picture personifies the people who are destroyed by a blow of a spear. Her muzzle resembles a human skull, thereby symbolizing death. Art historian Geis Wang Hensbergen believes that "Gernika" seems to be an absurd corrida with the violated rules: the horse is injured and the bull, and the Picador's spear.
Wounded horse
A dead soldier is visible under the horse. Apparently, his hand is cut down. She lies beside and still squeezes the swallow of a swift, from which the flower is breaking through. The flower symbolizes life breaking through the ruins. It is possible to draw an analogy with a descendant of oak in Gernik, under which the kings swore to respect the rights of the people of Basque. Oak survived when bombarded. On the hands of the soldier are visible stigmatics, symbolizing martyr and innocent death.
"Gernika" - a picture that can be called the most famous and most significant in the work of the great Spanish artist. The painting in the style of cubism was written by order of the Government of the Spanish Republic for the Spanish Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris.
Picture "Gernik" Was written in 1937. Canvas, oil. 349 × 776 See Currently located in the Museum of the Queen Sofia in Madrid. The plot of the picture is based on the bombardment of the city of Gernik German "Legion Condor" during the Civil War in Spain on April 26, 1937. As a result of the bombardment and fire, about 75% of the buildings of the city were destroyed. In just three hours, several thousand bombs were reset onto the hennik. After the fall, the city burned for three days. Victims of bombardment, in different calculations, are from 120 to 300 people. The picture covers not only the horrors of the very bombing, when people died from explosions and fire, but also the horror of the Spanish revolution, held from 1931 to 1939, and the civil war in Spain.
After ordering the canvas on the theme of the destroyed gernik, Picasso immediately began writing it. The artist's creation took a strand of the month. After the picture was presented at the World Exhibition in Paris, not the most flattering statements appeared to Picasso. Not many estimated the scale of the cloth's ideas, as Cubism, and in those days and today, remains incomprehensible to many fans of painting. The Madrid magazine "Sabado Chartko" even wrote that "Perhaps this is the worst that I created Pablo Picasso for my life." However, the paintings had a lot of adherents who could understand the entire depth of the artist's idea, which, with the help of images and symbols, was able to transfer not only the horror of the war, but also the nature and some subtleties of those events.
All action paintings occurs in the room. In all likelihood, in this way, Picasso reflected the event of bombing in its work, when about two thousand inhabitants were under the rubble. The head of the bull in the left corner, according to some interpretations, is a symbol of Spain, which turned away from the horrors of horror in Gernik. The light bulb under the ceiling is a symbol of a light bulb in the torture chamber. Instead of a language, a woman, a bull and horses that are confused by the killed child are daggers - symbols of a piercing cry. The floor in the room resembles a host card.
An interesting story related to Gersona occurred in 1940. Then the German troops entered Paris. Pablo Picasso came from Gestapo. Seeing the Picasso on the table the reproduction of the painting "Gernika", asked him: "Did you do it?" What Picasso replied: "No, you did it."
"GERNIKA" Picture Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso: GUERNICA (Guernica)
Speech Date: 1937
Topic: bombardment of the Spanish city of Gernik German "Legion Condor" on April 26, 1937. The horror of the civil war in Spain.
Direction: Cubism
Canvas, oil
Dimensions: 349 × 776 cm.
National Museum of the Center for Arts of Queen Sofia, Madrid.
"Gernika" is one of the most famous paintings Pablo Picasso. In 2009, art historians found that the prototype of the picture was the illustration of the Mozarab Bible of the X century, which Picasso could see in Paris in 1937.
Pablo Picasso - Not only the founder, but also a cult artist for many generations. One of the manifestations of the cult is numerous remakes, replicas and other ways to recreate it. One of these religious works was the picture "Gernik".
Historical events that have formed the basis of the "Gernik" picture
Picture "Gernik" was written Pablo Picasso In 1937. The plot of the picture is the tragic events on April 26, 1937, when the Luftwaffe Division "Legion Condor" bombed the city of Grannik (the country of Baskov, the autonomous community in Spain) in the framework of Hitler's support for Franco (Franco fought for power with Republicans, and the city of Herront was in Hands of Republicans).
German aviation bombed herrnik about three hours, throwing several thousand bombs into the city, after which the fire began in the city. As a result, about 75% of the buildings of the city were destroyed, the death toll was not accurately established, according to some data - 250-300 people.
For the tragedy taking place in Gernik, followed the whole world, including Pablo Picasso. Despite the fact that the artist never happened in Gernik, these events were deeply impressed by him. Within a month after the events of April 26, 1937 Picasso. It works on a large-scale band "Gernik" - its dimensions were 3.5 m in height and 7.8 m in width.
"Gernik", Pablo Picasso, 1937, canvas, oil, Museum of Queen Sofia, Madrid
On April 27, 1937, the Times newspaper printed a note about the bombardment of Gernik by German Luftwaffe. The propaganda of Frankists denied the fact of the bombing and insisted that the Republicans themselves were set fire to Grannik (such a tactic "of the scorched land" (this really happened to the city of Irun, also in the Basque Country).
Description of the picture
In the picture - the suffering of people trying to escape from the destruction and fire. Monochrome color gamma associates a picture with newspaper photography and reflects the lifelessness of the war.
In 2009, the prototype "Gerniki" was found - they were an illustration in the Mosarab Bible of the X century, stored in the Council of the Spanish city of Leon, a group of art historians came to this conclusion. Strong similarity can be traced in the image of the bull, horses and some people profiles.
Mosarabskaya Bible exhibited in Barcelona in 1929 and in Paris in 1937, when Picasso. lived there and painted "Grant".
According to the artist and professor of art history, Benito Escarpico (Benito Escarpizo) from Leon, the similarity between the illustration from Mosarakha Bible and "Gerns" Too great to be the coincidence - inspiration Picasso. The drawing of the Bible is obvious.
"Gernik" Picasso formed the basis of the plot of the film Emir Kusturica "Gernik"
In 1978, Emir Kusturica released his grain film "Gernika" - he was a director, and a screenwriter and the operator of this film. Subsequently, the film received the main prize at the Festival of Student Cinema in Karlovy Vary. The film tells about a boy from the Jewish family. The child intuitively comes to the awareness of the horror of the German occupation occurring around him through the prism of the picture Picasso "Gernika".
In his film, Kustitsa retells the famous legend about "Gernik" Picasso:
In 1940, after some time after the entry of the German troops in Paris, Picasso. came from Gestapo. On the table of the artist there were postcards with reproduction "Gerniki". "Did you do it?" - asked an officer. "No, - answered Picasso.- you made you. You can take yourself to my memory. "
"Gernik" Picassoit is considered one of the strongest anti-war works in world art.