Lecture - Picasso's Guernica; its making and the details of the massacre.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/2013/12/the-nature-and-military-rationale-of-the-bombing-of-gernika/
It includes the details of the bombing of the town of Guernica (26th April 1937) and the making of the large canvas painted by Pablo Picasso and inspired in this massacre. 7 photographs taken by Dora Maar reveal the process.
Translation from the Spanish from the original lecture given by Eva Bosch at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Largely thanks to Picasso’s searing painting, Guernica is now remembered as the place where a new and horrific modern warfare came of age. Picasso had previously not created explicitly political art but the Spanish Republic was keen to get the world’s most famous artist to identify himself with the Republican cause. In early January 1937, he responded positively to an invitation to contribute to the Spanish pavilion at the World Fair in Paris scheduled for later in the year. That contribution would be Guernica.

In fact, the painting, begun on 1 May, just four days after the bombing is not just about what happened in the Basque town. There were three prior influences – the savage bombing of Madrid in October and November 1936 and again throughout April 1937; the suffering of refugees who were bombed and strafed as they fled in February 1937 from Picasso’s native Málaga to Almería, and the bombing of Durango on 31 March. The moving articles on Madrid by Louis Delaprée published in Paris on 8 January 1937 as Le Martyr de Madrid had a profound impact on Picasso, manifested first through his series of prints Dream and Lie of Franco and subsequently in Guernica. Poignant photos of the suffering of the refugees from Málaga were published in the pamphlet The Crime on the Road distributed in France in March 1937. Articles on Durango appeared in the French press in the first week of April and the powerful pamphlet Durango, ville martyre on 30 April, the day before Picasso began Guernica. George Steer’s article was reprinted in full on 29 April in L’Humanité and read by Picasso. Already affected by Louis Delaprée’s despatches and the pamphlets on Málaga and Durango, and less than a month before the opening of the World Fair, he began work on what would become his most famous painting.
Paul Preston
https://youtu.be/9HSaFYeUS28

Видео Lecture - Picasso's Guernica; its making and the details of the massacre. канала boschev