Pablo Picasso's Gruernica

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In 1937, Pablo Picasso depicts an epic event in history in his "Guernica" using visual symbolism, line, space, light and color which advocates to the observer the truth behind the subject matter of the artwork itself. The line used leads to specific images to tell the story; the space throughout the work is filled with many jagged and sharp shapes with an odd use of positive and negative space. The light and color illuminate the actual scene. Knowing and understanding how the artist uses these three fundamental tools will guide us to the meaning and logic of the artwork.

Pablo Picasso's use of line gives a sense of direction almost as key to unlock the meaning of the artwork. In our culture we read from left to write. The artist knows this and points us directly left were we see a bull, in a frightened frozen stare as if we are looking at the events taking place from its point of view, putting us in the shoes as a victim helpless to do nothing, unable to escape, and bulls being color blind leads to why we viewing everything in black and white. The bull leads us down to two ghastly images. One image is a mother holding here dead child, the other an extended arm that leads us right to a soldiers severed head and his severed arm with a broken sword. Immediately after seeing these disturbing images we come to see that some kind of event took place that involved the military and deaths of innocent people. The tip of the broken sword brings us up to two more images, a woman who seems to be severely injured staring up at the next image of a woman holding a candle next to a light fixture. The woman staring up at the light seems desperate for a change, but accepts her own fate, taking one last look at the light before it is exti...

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...ection for a painting and Picasso has set myriad of images to follow allowing us to gather those images into a collective a retrieve the logical meaning, war causes death, along with the suffering of innocence, and the eradication of the soul and spirit. The positive space is a bombardment of vivid images of warlike scenarios and sufferings, negating the rules of positive and negative space, but also done intentionally to create the real life emotion and attentions to all details. The color used is how the bull perceives the world in black and white as the observer, and like the bull, in its origin will die. The painting of the Nazi attack on ancient city Guernika by Pablo Picasso is a direct reflection of how art can express more than words the world around us even if the images themselves are not real or even grotesque, the images still reveal truth and emotion.

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