Distortion, Media, and Trauma in Picasso’s Guernica

Picasso’s Guernica takes influence from a variety of forms of media in order to depict trauma and violence of the Spanish Civil War. Following on from his developments in Cubism the artist invented the concept of the collage in 1912 revolutionising the art world. This imitation of collage distorts the work and its fragmented appearance represents the disjunction of Spanish society. The artist captures the chaos of war and the separation of the public as a result of not only the bombings but the Civil War as a whole. His peer, Georges Braque, often used newspaper to create his collages and Picasso took after him in this instance, creating a newspaper-like effect painting small black lines on white canvas. The simulation of the newspaper is relevant to how Picasso learned of the events of 26th April 1936. While living in Paris, Picasso read the news of the bombing of Guernica in the newspaper, the article contained horrifying photographs of the aftermath and eye-witness accounts of the events. The painting itself is monochromatic and appears as an image might have done in the newspaper. Rudolf Arnheim explains how monochromy creates a “removal from reality” and in this instance “does not so much present another world [...] but rather less than a world”. This suggests that the monochromatic mural evokes how the cruel and subhuman behaviour of people has resulted in an inferior world. The artist distorts reality by removing colour in order to evoke the depressing and fearful world that the Spanish people live in.

The invention of cinema and film in the late 19th century changed the way that art was created. Cinema was able to depict one scene from a variety of different perspectives, whether that refers to people or the angle. The experimentation of both Picasso and Braques led to the creation of Cubism, it takes influence from the cinematic method using this idea of different perspectives to create one overall image or “fragmentation and resynthesis”. Picasso’s Cubist style of distortion, fragments of an object from different view points and reconstructs them into one image and the geometric abstract forms of the figures in Guernica exemplify this concept. The Cubist style creates a sense of movement within the work, imitating that of the cinema and further exemplifying the artist’s influence from cinema.

However, Picasso takes influence from the cinema in another way, presenting the scene to us almost as a performance. The importance of chiaroscuro in this work is significant and this is heightened by the monochromatic nature of the work. The light in the upper foreground expels white triangles of light around the canvas, exposing the horrors of the Guernica bombings to us, the audience. These rays of light replicate that of a spotlight on a stage, evocative of how Picasso is presenting the events at Guernica and forcing us to see the barbarity of the bombings. The light also appears in the image of a human eye, symbolising how we are the audience watching over this scene of anguish and pain. The work is made up of small vignettes of suffering, depicting distorted people enduring the bombings of Guernica. Picasso distorts time through the use of classical references, such as the Pieta image on the left hand side, to display a very modern kind of warfare indicating how suffering is universal and constant throughout time. The woman’s head is thrown back as she screams in pain and for help, holding her dead child in her arms. As films began to have sound, Picasso adapted once again, bringing audio to his works. Picasso creates the volume on the canvas so effectively, making the image even more harrowing as we almost feel as though we are there. The influence of media on Guernica manifests itself as a combination of distortion and symbolism, helping Picasso to present the trauma following bombings of Guernica.

Picasso distorts his images in order to expose the truth, this juxtaposition presents itself in the form of ambiguous symbolism. Many aspects of the work are still debated today however, it is the ambiguity of the work that allows it to be interpreted by an individual and given its own meaning. It achieved its infamy as a universal motif of suffering using methods similar to Dalí’s ‘paranoic-critic method’, see figure 7. During this time period the people of Spain lived in constant fear of fighting with constant battles, the ‘Red Terror’ and starvation. The ambiguous nature of Guernica allows the work to represent, not only the suffering of the people of the Basque town, but also all Spaniards living in fear of the Civil War. The unidentifiable figures are the civilians of Guernica however, when viewed today, represent victims of war in general. Picasso expresses his Pacifist views through the work, depicting the victims of Guernica with ambiguity in order to make a comment on the violence and trauma of war more generally and its effects.