Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Pablo Picasso and his contribution to contemporary art
Pablo Picasso and his contribution to contemporary art
Essay about Pablo Picasso's Guernica
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
It is a paradox of sorts to think that going to war would make someone a coward. What is more valiant than flocking to the battle lines and making the ultimate sacrifice for the innocent civilians back home? But Pablo Picasso, an abstract artist of the 20th century, argues that these soldiers—these martyrs—die for nothing when organized combat turns to genocide and massacre. On April 27, 1934, as a brutal civil war was ravaging Picasso’s native country of Spain, Hitler chose the Basque village of Guernica as a target for Nazi bombing practice. Over sixteen hundred townspeople were killed or wounded in the process. After hearing of these attacks, an enraged Picasso began sketching what would eventually become Guernica, an eleven by twenty five …show more content…
The coloring is reminiscent of Picasso’s encounter with the daunting reports and photos plastered across newspapers the day after Guernica was bombed (Arbeiter). To further this effect, he includes a textured pattern over the horse and throughout certain parts of the painting to resemble newsprint. Both of these features enhance the sense of objective reporting that the painting attempts to create because Picasso is considering government leaders who boast the merits of war, and squelching their protests with the unbiased nature of firsthand accounts. Guernica digs into the truth behind the pictures. Picasso does not want civilians to passively look at the images in the papers, but to visualize the horrific bombing from the inside. Colors would have distracted potential critics from his message; black and white forces them to think. It is almost as if he’s taking on this style as a way of daring someone to question him. Guernica is journalistic in the sense that Picasso reports the facts about the futile nature of war. He takes the contents of traditional photography and peels back a layer to reveal distorted images that convey combat’s true
This art analysis will define the theme of the universality of 20th century modern warfare in the context of modern works of art by David Levinthal and Roger de la Fresnaye. David Levinthal’s “Untitled” (1972) is commentary on the mass killing of modern warfare in the 20th century, which killed many millions of men during Hitler’s invasion of Europe. Levinthal’s childhood imagery of tanks, soldiers, and homes visualize the mass killing of war as a “universal” concept in the depiction of the modern psyche. Roger de la Fresnaye’s “Artillery” (1911) is also a commentary on cubist imagery that projects a military
If one came close to the figure’s stomach where there’s the seafoam green, one can see the strong mark makings of the paint brushes and knife strokes, making the paint come out of the canvas. Similarly, Brown also uses big paint strokes of different colors to direct viewer’s eyes around the artwork. For instance, on the left side of the figure, there is a big vertical downward motion of a brush stroke in maroon, that connects to a green streak that goes up and encompasses the figure’s head and then downward to the body of the figure, which outlines and pushes the figure to stand out. And to make our eyes go back to the figure, Brown paints a blue triangle on the chest, making it a focal point due to it’s dark color that stands out of the light colors. And if someone stood facing the side of the painting, one can see the thick globs of paint that would make the viewer take a double glance to see if it was either a painting or a sculpture, which reinforces the idea that the painting is coming alive and making one feel
In terms of colours, the white colour dominates in this painting. It signifies purity, freedom and change. In the past the rulers have dominated over the people but now the prevailing power is in the hands of the peasants. The large green leaves, echoing the horse`s mane in the painting symbolise the revival of the human mind and notify of the arriving change in people`s lives.
George Gittoes (b.1949) creates works that that communicate the issue of the graphic horror of war. A social realist painter, photographer and filmmaker, his approach to art is that ‘he layers and accumulates material until, out of apparent chaos, there is a synthesis of idea, passion and image’ (Mendelssohn, 2014). As an eyewitness to the world's war zones, Gittoes clearly uses his work as a means of communication to society.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
Tim O’Brien states in his novel The Things They Carried, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat” (77). This profound statement captures not only his perspective of war from his experience in Vietnam but a collective truth about war across the ages. It is not called the art of combat without reason: this truth transcends time and can be found in the art produced and poetry written during the years of World War I. George Trakl creates beautiful images of the war in his poem “Grodek” but juxtaposes them with the harsh realities of war. Paul Nash, a World War I artist, invokes similar images in his paintings We are Making a New World and The Ypres Salient at Night. Guilaume Apollinaire’s writes about the beautiful atrocity that is war in his poem “Gala.”
· Packard, Fred M. The Effects of War on the Works of Two Spanish Painters -- Goya and Picasso. Master's Thesis for Kent State University, 1961.
The begging of World War II not only changed countries, economic structures and politics but also had an enormous influence on different sides of life of people and societies. Well-known from the historical experience is the fact that every single of such size as World War always has its resonance on arts, as culture is an inseparable part of people’s lives. Talking of WWII, the response within artistic communities was so strong that artists became a part of the ideological war of the time (Martin). The position of lots of creative people was at the same time very fearful, as they found themselves in occupied countries under the threat of totalitarian regimes and had to immigrate
Surrealism was considered a cultural movement of the time and started in the early 1920s. The aims of the Surrealists of this time seemed to follow day to day life and all they tried to show in their works were to target dream and reality. It targeted the inconsistent of the reality and dreams. They also aimed to target the element of surprise.
Pablo Picasso is the worlds most renowned artist of the 20th century. He did a variety of skills related to the world of art. Most people remember him as just a painter, but he was more than that. He could do sculpting, drawing, engraving, lithographs, and more. One of his most famous periods of all time, The Blue Period showed all that he was capable of. More than the paintings above all else he learned all his abilities self-taught from his father and the schooling his father helped provide.
When speaking about color we have to recognize that they’re categorized into “primary colors red, yellow and blue and also three secondary color are orange, green, and violet”1. As shown in Goya’s work yellow is used to highlight the Spaniards. The protagonist is shown wearing yellow as well as another man laying dead besides the doomed onlookers. Goya’s use of yellow as the primary color has an overwhelming influence to direct the viewers eyes. This is one of the first things I noticed when I began to examine the painting myself. Our eyes are drawn to these figures even more as th...
With just a quick glance, Guernica may look like it was painted from a standard Cubist point of view but once you examine it closely, it gives off a whole other meaning to it. The first thing in particular was of the colors that Picasso
Picasso would go through various periods throughout his career during his creation of this painting he was in his, Rose Period. During this time his styling of painting would change in color. As well in line quality, some say that this painting foreshadow his Cubism movement through his use of lines. For this painting his style would became more expressive and his using in warmer colors increased. The line quality would also form a change in its appearance.
The similarities are striking. This is probably due, in no small part, to the inspiration for both works. Picasso and Eliot shared a common inspiration for their masterpieces the atrocities of war. Guernica was a response by Picasso to the German Luftwaffe's bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. During this 1937 attack hundreds of civilians were killed.
middle of paper ... ... Guernica is blue, black and white, 3.5 meters (11 ft) tall and 7.8 meters (25.6 ft) wide, a mural-size canvas painted in oil. This painting can be seen in the Museo Reina Sofa in Madrid”. Guernica is an enormous reminder of the disasters that a war causes.