Guernica

My report was on the painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso. The subject of the painting was the bombing of Guernica. While I was doing research I found many interesting fact about the event. The town served as target practice for the Nazis. In the painting, Picasso uses a lot of symbols to show the suffering of humans affected by war. He uses a horse to symbolize the people of Spain. Another symbol is a flower. A dying soldier is holding the flower because it represents hope, peace, and beauty. This man obviously was holding on to his beliefs until the end. Another symbol in the painting is the bull. The bull represents evil and the Nationalists. The analysis of the bull is a controversial symbol. Some say that it is just a farm animal while others say that it stand for evil. Picasso never said what any of the symbols or meanings of his paintings were. He said that to different people it meant different things. He used the horse and the bull as the subject in many of his paintings. However, the meaning changes in each composition.