Picasso And Goya: Guernica And War Halls

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Picasso and Goya: Guernica and War Halls

Introduction

This sheet is a sign of perfect concordance of damage or "ravages", as Goya wanted to use, that war causes society and different elements. He was a direct witness of that war and his cruelty, and so he wanted to reflect it. His stay in Zaragoza during the War of Independence left a deep mark on the artist. Goya wanted to capture and collect in his engravings a proof of war and violence that was lived as a chronicler, reflect the bitter and raw atmosphere where man is immersed in a war situation that causes brutality, devastation, death, death, misery and hunger. They are a chronicle of human failure.

In the work, Goya has represented the destruction of a home after the explosion of a bomb causing a large blast of all its interior and ruinous state. He highlights several bodies but, above all, the body of a young woman fallen on a group of bodies twisted by such a horrible event. It has been repeated that the initial reason for these creations was Him’s visit to Zaragoza and that he toured the Aragonese lands soaked in blood and death visions. On the other hand, his work is also a protest and a plea for humanity amid the agitation of armed violence, and anticipates the initiative that Henry Dunant could take sixty years later, in Solferino.

Developing

Observation of the works

  • Guernica

Pablo Picasso’s Guernica stands out for its great dimension more than meters long and more than 3 meters high. Despite its title, it does not refer to the bombing of its name but constitutes a generic allegation against barbarism and the terror of war as a testimony that the Spanish civil war meant, as well as the premonition of what was going to happen in the Second World War.

This work is painted with a chromatic sobriety (white, black and gray) thus giving a great intensity to each of the reasons that determine the extreme tragic character of the scene. The structure resembles that of a triptych: a central panel where an agonizing horse and the woman carrier of a lamp is listed; On the right, the house in flames with the woman shouting, and, on the left, the bull and the woman taking her dead son. All elements are gathered, highlighting the central part, which is based.

In addition, twelve symbols are represented in the painting: six human beings and three animals (bull, horse and dove). From left to right, the characters that appear are a bull, mother with dead son, dove, dead warrior, bulb, horse, kneel darling.

Guernica is considered one of the most important paintings of the Malaga painter Pablo Picasso and also of the twentieth century, both because of his political character and for his style, a mixture of cubist and expressionist elements that undoubtedly make it unique and that served as a dark inspiration. In addition, it has a high degree of abstraction considering it a painting nothing naturalistic. In this case, Picasso treated him as an allegory where each element has its symbolic meaning. This painting is the precise expression and the solution of a problem. There are other symbolic figures present in Guernica, such as the woman carrying light, traditionally interpreted as a symbol, of which we find an iconographic source in a Prud’hon box, the bull is the only one who looks at the public, the bulb circumscribed in a kind of eye … for Picasso, the representation of women was an effective element to show suffering and pain, since that emotional quality attributes them. Also, Guernica contains non -symbolic elements more united to the war environment like the characters shouting, the dead child, the woman with her arms raised fleeing from the fire. Picasso suggested that the same audience must interpret the symbols as they understood them.

  • The disasters of war, n. º 30

Goya shows the horror and devastation of armed violence, the resulting dehumanization and the anguish and suffering of the victims. The lucid, compassionate and inflexible representations of the Goya War and its consequences are not only unique, but are also very relevant today today.

It can be seen that within the house everything has been devastated and agitated by the explosion giving that value to the scene: the roof beams fallen by the environment, the furniture is messy and to the piled bodies and one more is added that seems to be precipitating For deflagration, a fallen woman with her bare legs perch on another corpse. In Goya the groups of bodies piled up refer us to mass and summary executions

Goya has created a dark space, perhaps showing that the event was at night and would have surprised the inhabitants of the house dressed in nightmark. To get that darkness in his engraving, he insistently uses waterferent. The uncontrolled positions of lifeless bodies, the expressions of faces with open mouths and chaos inside the room generate a bleak environment.

In its composition the union of light, movement, argument and the time in which the scene that we almost perceive as a film sequence is collected.

Disasters covers the events that occurred in Spain between 1808 and 1815. Goya shows in the disasters of war a personal and critical vision of the reality of the time takes care of the minimum details, nothing escapes his ingenuity, everything shown has an intention. The break with the classical composition, because the disorder is related to the language of violence, and uses the different iconographic and pictorial nuances to capture it in terms of its style, use the technique of etc. Use the Aguatinta on a few occasions. You see how he has worked with a dry tip, the woman’s face, chest and legs and the one that is left to the left of the scene. With Buril applies in the shadow of the beam under the right thigh of women in the foreground and reinforces the lines of the waterfreer broken at the bottom and in the head of the female figure that precipitates.

This engraving has been considered as a precedent of Guernica for chaos and composition that is shown, the suffering and disaster of the situation of the bodies, the fragmentation of objects and equipment located anywhere in the engraving, the dismemberment of their bodies and The figure of the dead child with an inverted head, reminiscent of the mother holding her son of Pablo Picasso.

Picasso committed to the Republic in January 1937 to carry a work for the Spanish pavilion of the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1937. Picasso, who did not know Guernica (Gernika), felt moved by the slaughter of innocents and reflected the repulsion of any war. So he starts in his workshop, his work process after carrying out many notes and versions of which the final work will then come out. Although the context of the commission is political, the work that Picasso made is a work of a universal nature. In the painting, the place of the massacre is not represented, only the title allows to identify the accurate historical context to which the painted scene sends, since no visual element explicitly refers to the city or the bombing of Guernica. 

Pablo Picasso said the following about his work: painting is not to decorate apartments, art is an offensive and defensive war instrument against the enemy. The war of Spain is the battle of the reaction against the people, against freedom. In the mural painting in which I am working, and that Guernica will title, and in all my latest works, I clearly express my repulsion towards the military caste, which has plunged Spain into an ocean of pain and death. The Guernica showed the future abstract expressionists that the maximum expression of solidarity towards the same time was the one that arose from the interior of the artist.

Historical context and style

  • Theme

Goya and Picasso show the cruelty and the darkest part of human barbarism that is death as a result of war through the suffering of the victims, these being the protagonists of the work and not another element. Despite its horrors, Picasso’s Guernica tries to convey some light and hope.

  • Form and composition

Both pictures have a triangular geometric formal structure: in the most central Goya work and Picasso organizes it in delimited triangular groups whose base is almost pure straight lines. It is an element that attracts a lot of attention. It also shows that the look goes from top to bottom.

  • Color:

The two works are acromatic. Both use clear figures on dark funds giving contrast and drama. Goya seems to use a kind of ink in sepia and reserve white areas for corpses and Picasso makes use of black and white with a gray range that produce a two -dimensional effect.

  • Others:

You can see some movement, in Goya’s work you can see a frozen action of the characters falling and fallen along with the chair that can be seen in the upper right part. Picasso’s Guernica can also see that the characters have been frozen in full action of screaming. Also, in Picasso’s work, being a cubist style, more than one point of view can be identified in the same plane.

Comparison

Painting and sculpture were always in continuous contact and constant dialogue with Picasso. Picasso also collects a trend in photography and cinema where he played coloring scenes and images to reinforce feelings and emotions. Throughout his career he knew how to reduce his chromatic range in his works as black and white in Guernica. The same year of Guernica, Picasso painted the portrait of Marie-Thérèse, the portrait of Dora Maar and Portrait of Nush Éluard . In the latter, Picasso plays with women’s clothes and symbolism. In the flap of the clothes of the protagonist of the painting, two characters are represented, one of which has a torch, a symbol of light and life, while the other, which touches a trumpet, is figured with a skull in The head site, symbolizing death.

Picasso has always been groundbreaking of the rules established in art, using the same materials as other artists of his time but differently, resuming the lines as the basis of his works and the representation of geometry by modifying the effects on perspective. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, shows the main elements of his entire route. The various oils, drawings and engravings he did before, meet in a single scene.

At that time, Picasso makes 45 sketches in which he would address what the main figures of the scene and their composition would be since there were several modifications developing several phases. It is true that frontal reading is what regulates the entire Picassiana work, a work that, based on the invention of cubist language underlines the two -dimensionality of the environment, its flatness. The cubist features that are reflected is the reduction of natural forms to geometric shapes but also uses expressionism in the extreme gestures of the characters and great purity and clearly defined lines that remind us of neoclassicism. Also, the lines make it show details and define elements. Plane mastery with little use of nuances with a high hire. There is a presence of the multiple perspective breaking with the unique point of view. As for example, the thrown man seems to be headed and profile.

References

  • Goya in the Prado. (2012, September 10). War ravages. URL: https: // www.GoyaEnelprado.es/works/tab/goya/ravages-of-the-war-1/?tx_gbgonline_pi1%5bgocollectionids%5d = 27
  • Camón Aznar, José, «The sites of Zaragoza in the engravings of Goya», Heraldo de Aragón, October 11, 1953, collected by Juan Domínguez Lasierra in Heraldo Domingo on August 17, 2003. URL: www.Associationsitios.com/engradosgoya.htm
  • Balsalobre Garcia, J. M. (2002). A look at Goya: the disasters of war. URL: http: // www.Juntadeandalucia.is/education/vscripts/w_bc1812/w/rec/4180.PDF
  • Sara Lasso, S. L. (2019, November 1). Analysis and comments of the Guernica. URL: https: // www.aboutespanol.com/ANALYSIS-Y-COMENTRIARY- GUERNICA-180237
  • Imaginary Andrea, to. Yo. (2020, March 24). Meaning of Pablo Picasso Guernica Table. URL: https: // www.Culture.com/en
  • Eugenia Garcia, U. G. (2017, April 20). The barbarism of war in Goya and Picasso. URL: https: // chain.com/program/2017/04/20/LA_VENTANA/1492709974_ 150192.HTML

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