The Dream and lie of Franco
Pablo Picasso
1937
Picasso • Spanish / Living in Paris • First truly political work • Outbreak of Civil War • Bombing of Guernica • postcards to raise funds for Spanish
Republican Government • sold at the Spanish Pavilion of the 1937
World’s Fair • Last four pictures became studies for a mural
he painted for the World’s Fair
Francisco Franco • Spanish Dictator • Fascist • Claimed to defend and
represent Spanish Culture and Values
• Bombing of Guernica • Allowed Adolf Hitler to test
out “Saturation Bombing” strategy
• 3 hours / mostly women, children, elderly
• Happened on market day
• Prints of 18 images
• Prose Poem • First 14 etchings
include aquatint (Jan 8 1937)
• Last 4 added without aquatint after the Bombing of Guernica
• (June 7 1937)
Franco riding a horse waving a sward and flag
Franco with a ridiculously large penis, waiving a sword and flag
Franco attacking a classical
sculpture with a pick
Franco dressed as a courtesan
with a flower and a fan
Franco being gored by a bull
Franco at prayer surrounded by
barbed wire
Franco on top of a dead creature
Franco chasing a winged horse
Franco riding on a pig carrying a
spear
Franco Eating a Dead Horse
The aftermath of a battle / with a
corpse
The aftermath of a battle / with a
dead horse
Franco and a Bull
(bull symbolizing Spain)
Franco and a Bull Fighting
A woman crying & reaching up
Bombing of Guernica / without
aquatint
A woman fleeing a burning house
with child
A woman cradling a child
A woman shot with an arrow
and reaching up amid devastation
... "cries of children, cries of women, cries of birds, cries of flowers, cries of timbers, and of stones, cries of bricks, cries of furniture, of beds, of chairs, of curtains, of pots, of cats, and of papers, cries of odors which claw at one another, cries of smoke pricking the shoulder of the cries which stew in the cauldron and of the rain of birds which inundates the sea which gnaws the bone and breaks its teeth biting the cotton wool which the sun mops up from the plate which the purse and the pocket hide in the print which the foot leaves in the rock." - Picasso
Guernica - 1937 Worlds Fair