Surrealism and the
Spanish Civil War
Guernica! Pablo Picasso's masterpiece will forever be associated with the horrors of war.
It was painted to illustrate one
of the countless inhumane atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War. In the gripping Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War Robin
Adčle Greeley delves into the impact of current events on art. Times do impact creativity. In this case the focus is how Picasso, Dalí, Miró, Masson and Caballero
responded to the turbulence of war with their craft.
Pablo Picasso agreed to create the centerpiece for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair, which was held in Paris.
On April 27th, 1937, Hitler, certainly with Franco's knowledge and agreement, used a small Basque village for target practice, testing the growing Nazi war machine. The Nazis
pounded Guernica for 3 hours. The city burned for days and 1,600 were killed or wounded as a result. These events inspired Picasso. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative;
certainly from the Nazis. After the Fair closed Guernica toured several cities to raise awareness of the atrocities from and threat of fascism.
Picasso's protests weren't finished. In 1940 occupied France he distributed prints of Guernica to Nazi officers. When they asked him “Did you
do this?”, Picasso responded, “No, you did”.
Robin Adčle Greeley's Surrealism and the Spanish Civil War includes Miró’s Still Life with Old Shoe and Dalí’s Autumn Cannibalism, placing
them against historical events. The work would not be completed without an investigation of the Surrealist’s flirtations with fascism.
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