Guernica
            That Picasso’s new style may have truly monumental grandeur is evident in his mural Guernica, painted in 1937. As a citizen of a neutral nation, Picasso had not been greatly affected by World War I, nor did he show any interest in politics during the 1920s. But the Spanish Civil War stirred him to ardent partisanship with the Loyalists. The mural, executed for the Pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the Paris International Exposition, was inspired by the terror-bombing of Guernica, the ancient capital of the Basques in northern Spain. It does not represent the event itself; rather, with a series of powerful images, it evokes the agony of total war.
            The destruction of Guernica was the first demonstration of the technique of saturation bombing which was later employed on a huge scale in the course of World War II; the mural was thus a prophetic vision of doom --- the doom that threatens us even more in this age of nuclear warfare. The symbolism of the scene resists precise interpretation, despite its several traditional elements: the mother and her dead child are the descendants of the Pieta, the woman with the lamp recalls the statue of Liberty, and the dead fighter’s hand, still clutching a broken sword, is a familiar emblem of heroic resistance. We also sense the contrast between the menacing, human-headed bull, surely intended to represent the forces of darkness, and the dying horse.
            These figure owe their terrifying eloquence to what they are, not to what they mean; the anatomical dislocations, fragmentations and metamorphoses, which in the Three Dancers seemed willful and fantastic, now express a stark reality, the reality of unbearable pain. The ultimate test of the validity of collage construction (here in superimposed flat “cutouts” restricted to black, white, and gray) is that it could serve as the vehicle of such overpowering emotions.

Adapted from History of Art by H.W.Janson pp685-686