Awareness in the Arts

"Guernica"

Pablo Picasso, 1937

Oil on canvas

I'd always heard about the greatness of Pablo Picasso from the moment the word "art" was ever in my vocabulary, though I don't think I ever truly realized such until I began to understand the thoughts behind this painting. "Guernica," especially right now, feels significant to me in a way that feels far beyond just the craft. In combination with my own beliefs about the polarization between peoples and the anti-war message this painting so clearly expresses, I felt deeply moved, but also frustrated with the violence and carnage of humans. The broken bodies of both animals and people in this painting really reflect the loss that war brings upon everything and everyone, and I believe that Picasso depicted such ideas perfectly. With abstraction, a further level of attention to detail and time is needed to recognize many of the meanings behind certain works of art, and I can say that the dissection of this painting unmasks the horrors of war in way that made me feel anger and sorrow from an event that took place nearly a hundred years ago. I can now see precisely why it is revered as a masterpiece, because it is.