Picasso painted Guernica in 1937 after German and Italian bombers shelled Guernica, in Spains' Basque Country, on April 26 of that year and during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing happened at the request of Spanish Nationalist forces. The painting is an outcry, protest and lament of the self-assured, polite, smooth and famously composed Picasso.
In 1942, during the 1940-1944 German occupation of Paris, German officers often visited Picasso's Paris studio at a time when some of his paintings were being burned as decadent. On one visit, an aggressive Gestapo officer found a simple postcard of Guernica in the studio. The officer confronted the painter, and held before Picasso's face the postcard with its breathtaking indictments of war, national pride, meaningless death, pointless suffering, government hypocrisy, inflamed leadership and self-destruction.
"Did you do this?", the officer asked.
“No, sir. You did."
Brushdecor from JD Hull post
