The Scene

There is no mistaking the nature of this painting. It's explicit in its depiction of a brutal act. 

The images of carnage, of death, of extreme anquish and shock are combined together in one image.

The horse dominates the scene as it is fatally wounded and is in its last death rows. The bull, often featured in Picasso's art, stands stoically staring back at us just at the moment when light is introduced from somewhere outside of the scene to reveal what is happening. A soldier lies dismembered still glasping a broken sword. A woman, in flames, runs from a house ablaze. Another woman enters the scene, crippled as she does so...and another woman, screams hysterically at the loss of her child.

There is no doubt at the intention of the depiction of the scene and the intended impression it aims to give. This is the raw, unfiltered and horror of an atrocity calculated to do so by fellow human beings.

The painting we see here is presented as a two dimensional image as all images are in the main. But in fact Guernica presents itself in multiple layers which lends it to a multi-dimensional feel.

At the first level, we have the image itself which we see before us. A chaotic scene o& carnage and pain. A horse, centre stage, is brutally impelled by a spear as it rears in screaming pain. A burning woman escaping from a burning house. A dismembered man still clutching his sword. And a woman, holding her dead child in her arms, screams in destitution. Other images, two women, one seemingly tripping into the scene, the other wafted in to illuminate the scene.

We can’t escape the horror of what is presented before us. The image, the original, is so huge, that it occupies most of our peripheral vision. And virtually nowhere on the painting to escape this horror, no respite.

Picasso introduced sharp points that emanate from the mouths of the horse and the wailing woman, as if to accentuate the sharpness of the scream. This alone was unique to the painting and became associated with both Picasso and Guernica.

If this was all... (as if that wasn't enough)... the painting would be little more than a depiction of something horrible that happened and done so in Picasso's cubist leaning style. But there's much more here in this painting. Sure, we are not spared the explicitness of what we should expect from an event such as this, but looking deeper, the painting has several subtle delicate moments. The waiting woman who holds her dead child seems too close to the bull for it to be incidental. The bull doesn;t look like a bull, it has the look of a human, shocked itself at the scene. The expression on the woman holding the oil lamp and the tiny plant amongst all this carnage, utterly overwhealmed but providing some home for the future.

Our subconsious mind starts to make connections, it makes assumptions and develops theories as they all jostle in our minds, topsy turvey, as we are drawn to the scene as much as we are to the painting itself. We sense there is more...and there is...