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Bibliography

Primary Sources

BRIAN SEWELL. "The Glove That Changed Guernica." ​Evening Standard​, May 8, 2009, 35.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=pwh&AN=39146443&site=eds-l
ive.
I must now leap forward to the summer of 1970, three years before Picasso's
death. A friend, George Daskall, a Bulgarian then working on the Balkan desk of the
BBC's World Service and an amateur painter on heroic scale, interviewed Picasso, their
conversation ranging from the enigmas of Cubism to the ready- made object as art, the
objet trouvé and on to André Breton's philosophical thesis Crise de l'Objet published in
May 1936, in which he discussed the role of " the tortured object" in Surrealism, the
object distorted by treatment or events rather than imagination. This in turn led to a
discussion of Guernica, on which Picasso offered Daskall the comment: " You admire the
idea of the tortured object. Well, the town of Guernica became the most tortured object in
the world on April 29, 1937 [ sic — his recollection of the date was two days out]. My
Painting Guernica is strictly a personal reflection. André Breton's idea of the tortured
object was multiplied there into a mass of tortured objects. All living creatures in that
town, human and animal, were converted into tortured objects, decomposed, distorted
and shrieking their agony to the sky. The painti n g i s s i m ply a symbol ic
representation of the horror as seen in my own mind — that is all."

Foreign Legion Troops Fight Gen. Franco's Men in 1936​. Image. 2020.
https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/448292.

Francisco Franco​. Image. 2020. https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/949443.

Franco's Troops at the Ebro River​. Image. 2020.

https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/448291.

Franco's Troops in Battle​. Image. 2020.

https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/448375.

Guernica​. Photograph.
online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=133769&itemid=WE53&iid=145745.

Guernica Bombing​. Image. 2020. https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1262826.

McCully, Marilyn. ​Pablo Picasso​. Photograph.

https://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/Pablo-Picasso/108524/media.

Pablo, Picasso​. Photograph.

https://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/Pablo-Picasso/108524/media.
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Pablo Picasso: Guernica​. Photograph.

https://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/Guernica/629326/media.

Picasso, Pablo. ​Guernica​. 1937. Oil painting.

https://rokantyfaszystowski.org/en/guernica-pablo-picasso/.
Images being used in website:
Picasso working one Guernica
Picasso working on Guernica (1)
The city of Guernica after the bombing, 1937
sketch VI, 1937
Photo Report of the Evolution of Guernica, 1937
Guernica in the Spanish Pavilion, 1937

Picasso in His Studio​. Image. 2020. https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/448284.

Picasso, Pablo​. Photograph.

online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=133769&itemid=WE53&iid=49049.

"shock Troops" during the Spanish Civil War​. Image. 2020.

https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/448710.

Secondary Sources

Afinoguénova, Eugenia. "Looking at Picasso's Guernica after the Barcelona May Days of 1937:
The Transgressive 'Left' and the End of History." ​Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies​ 19,
no. 3 (September 2018): 319. https://doi.org/10.1080/14636204.2018.1495012.

"The Bombing of Guernica, 1937." Last modified 2005.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/guernica.htm.
Spain was embroiled in a convulsive civil war that had begun in July 1936 when
the right-wing Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco sought to overthrow Spain's
left-wing Republican government. It did not take long before this bloody internal Spanish
quarrel attracted the participation of forces beyond its borders - creating a lineup of
opponents that foreshadowed the partnerships that would battle each other in World War
II. Fascist Germany and Italy supported Franco while the Soviet Union backed the
Republicans. A number of volunteers made their way to Spain to fight and die under the
Republican banner including the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the United States."

Hitler's support of Franco consisted of the Condor Legion, an adjunct of the Luftwaffe.
The Condor Legion provided the Luftwaffe the opportunity to develop and perfect tactics
of aerial warfare that would fuel Germany's blitzkrieg through Europe during 1939 and
1940. As German air chief Hermann Goering testified at his trial after World War II:
"The Spanish Civil War gave me an opportunity to put my young air force to the test, and
a means for my men to gain experience." Some of these experimental tactics were tested
 3

on that bright Spring day with devastating results - the town of Guernica was entirely
destroyed with a loss of life estimated at 1,650. The world was shocked and the tragedy
immortalized by Pablo Picasso in his painting ​Guernica​.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/images/guernica1.jpg (photo)

"Guernica." ​Britannica Student​. https://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/Guernica/629326.

History. Last modified February 9, 2010. Accessed November 22, 2020.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/guernica-returned-to-spain.
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso's monumental anti-war mural ​Guernica​ is received
by Spain after four decades of refugee existence on September 10, 1981.

Early in the Spanish civil war, Spain's leftist Republican government commissioned
Picasso to paint a mural for the 1937 Paris International Exposition.

Guernica​ was exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition and
in 1939 was sent to New York on a tour for the benefit of the Spanish Refugee
Committee.

On September 10, 1981, ​Guernica​ arrived in Madrid under heavy guard. The painting
was to be housed in a new annex of the Prado Museum, only two blocks from the
Spanish parliament, which had been the scene of an abortive military coup in February
1981.

Jacob, John. "Raids on Guernica." Edited by Robert F. Gorman. Last modified 2007.
https://online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?bookId=260&articleName=GE20a_1651
142022&searchText=Guernica&searchOperators=any&category=History.
A number of studies have shed light on the genesis of the bombing raid on
Guernica. One actor in this drama who has often been ignored is Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini. Apparently, Mussolini had been in constant contact with Franco about the
"Basque problem."

The attack on Guernica surprised many contemporary observers because Germany had
largely left Spain to its own struggles in its civil war. Although Franco and Hitler shared
similar right-wing philosophies, they were not on particularly friendly terms with each
other. Mussolini and Hitler had developed far more amicable relations, however, and that
is why Mussolini's actions as a go-between were so important to carrying out the
bombing raid on Guernica.

Despite this attempt to halt their efforts, the Republicans continued to conduct even more
raids from across the French border against Nationalist targets. Although most Basque
residents stopped taking up arms against Franco, they provided secret assistance to the
rebels. Franco had proved that he could call on Germany's powerful military resources
with the intercession of the Italian government, but the destruction of Guernica was not
truly a triumph for the leadership of Spain, Italy, or Germany.
 4

McNeese, Tim. ​Pablo Picasso​. The Great Hispanic Heritage. N.p.: Chelsea House, 2006.
https://online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=133769&itemid=WE53&articleId=1009118.
"More than 70 years after its creation, Picasso's ​Guernica​ remains one of the most
powerful antiwar works of modern art ever created. Yet the work does not show a single
bomb, tank, or rifle. Only a few flames of destruction are visible at the top right of the
immense work. Instead, Picasso chose not to display the machines or even men of war
but the effects and aftermath. As one observer of the work noted: "​Guernica​ is an
unheard scream."4" (last paragraph)

"Pablo Picasso." ​World History: The Modern Era.​ Last modified 2020.
https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/315412.
His development of cubism introduced a radical new pictorial language that
created the foundation of abstract art. At first ridiculed by critics but soon to become a
dominating force in modern art, Picasso produced a prodigious body of work, spanning
more than 70 years, in a constant metamorphosis of styles and techniques including
painting, collage, sculpture, etching, and ceramics.

Rollyson, Carl. "Picasso Exhibits Guernica." Edited by Robert F. Gorman. Last modified 2007.
https://online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?bookId=260&articleName=GE20a_2651
019222&searchText=Guernica&searchOperators=any&category=History.
His political sympathies were always on the left (he joined the Communist Party
in 1944), although his art did not begin to contain explicit political themes until the
beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when a group of right-wing military officers, headed
by Francisco Franco, attacked the democratically elected government of Spain.
Outgunned by Franco and his allies (the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy), the
Spanish Republic waged a losing battle over a three-year period, gradually relinquishing
territory to the rebels, who mercilessly bombed the civilian population.

In early 1937, Picasso had written a poem ridiculing Franco, rejecting his rebellion,
treating him as a subhuman type, and evoking the violence of war: the screaming of
women, children, and animals, of inanimate objects such as beds, chairs, and curtains,
and of nature itself—a holocaust of screaming that could be seen and smelled because it
permeated everything. Picasso's strongest statement against the assault on the republic,
however, came after the bombing on April 26, 1937, of the Basque capital Guernica,
where sixteen hundred of seven thousand inhabitants were killed and 70 percent of the
town was destroyed during an attack by forty-three German bombers and low-flying
planes armed with machine guns.

The scene is dominated by the fragmented figures of human beings and animals arranged
both horizontally and vertically—all with mouths open, screaming: a man tumbling from
a burning building, a woman lamenting the dead baby in her arms, a dead soldier, fallen
from his horse, his body in pieces. Another woman, dazed by the desolation and chaos, is
on one knee, her head thrust upward on a diagonal toward a light held over the soldier by
another screaming woman. As in so much of Picasso's painting, human faces and bodies
are distorted (heads elongated, eyes, hands, and limbs enlarged), shown frontally and in
 5

profile at the same time, and flattened against the picture plane in order to increase the
emotional impact of the setting and the conception of a people, a whole nation, suffering.

Season 3, episode 22, "Cases for Political Art." December 15, 2016. In ​The Art Assingment​.
Podcast, video, 12:07. Accessed November 9, 2020.
https://www.pbs.org/video/cases-for-political-art-ugtmgc/.

"Spanish Civil War." ​World History: The Modern Era​. Last modified 2020.
https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/309979.
​Guernica Bombing
"After the successful defense of Madrid in 1936, the first great republican victory,
Nationalist forces commanded by Francisco Franco headed into the northern part of the
country. The difficulty of the terrain made for slow going, and Franco's impatience led to
the famous Guernica bombing, the first saturation bombardment of a civilian target in
world history.
Though the government of the republic worked to unify its forces under a centralized
command increasingly controlled by communists, it was ultimately defeated by the
fascist Nationalists in the most decisive and traumatic event in modern Spanish history."

Strom, Steven. "Cubism." ​World History: The Modern Era.​ Last modified 2020.
https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/310327.
Cubism was an artistic style begun by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in
early-20th-century France. In cubist art, objects were transformed into basic geometric
shapes and reassembled in a variety of ways so that the objects became abstract. That
abstraction resulted in the assertion of the two-dimensionality of the picture plane, which
was essential to the development of modern art.

Watts, Tim. "Guernica Bombing." ​World History: The Modern Era.​ Last modified 2020.
https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/309723.
By April 26, 1937, the front lines were approaching Guernica. The town had a
wartime population of 7,000-10,000 people and was a market center. The Basque people
regarded Guernica with deep mystical respect and considered it the spiritual capital of
their race. Early in the afternoon of April 26, an Italian plane dropped several bombs on
the Renteria Bridge east of the town but caused little damage. At around 4:30 P.M., a
more determined air attack began with German planes. (One of the German aims in
supplying planes to the Nationalists was to test weapons and tactics under actual war
conditions. The men who flew and serviced the planes formed the Condor Legion; very
few Spaniards were allowed to fly with the Germans by April 1937.) Guernica was not
defended by antiaircraft guns or Republican fighters, so the bombers were able to take
their time in aiming their bombs. For three hours, the planes continued to bomb the town.
When a bomber had exhausted its load, it was replaced by another. Without other fighters
to combat, German Heinkel 51 fighters swooped down and machine gunned people
fleeing through the fields around the city. Eyewitness accounts agreed that high explosive
bombs were followed by incendiary devices. Only darkness brought an end to the attacks.
The civilian dead numbered 1,654, with another 889 wounded.