Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Another Great Event in an April of the Past; This Time, in the World of Art...

In my previous blog, I had written about two important events which occurred in Aprils of the past; namely, the death of Roosevelt and the Doolittle Raid.
HOW could I have overlooked Pablo Picasso??
During the last week in April of 1937, an event of pure horror took place during the the tragic Spanish Civil War.
Franco had asked for military aid from Hitler during Germany's re-arming period  in his  defiance of the Versaille Treaty, and the German tyrant was more than eager to try out some of his new "toys".
And so numbers  of German bombers were sent to Spain in a bombing campaign. A particular Basque town called Guernica was singled out to test the bombing capabilities of Hitler's Luftwaffe. The town was essentially annihilated, and many hundreds of its inhabitants were murdered in what was an operation in pure terror.
The world recoiled in horror and revulsion, and  Pablo Picasso, by that time acknowledged as one of the world's great artists, set out to project his grief and pain, let alone his  illimitable  anger, by creating  a mural of large size, which he titled, simply, "Guernica".
The world has known of it since its creation, and is recognized by millions as one of the great paintings of the 20th century, and  one of the most powerful statements ever  made by an artist,  against  one of Man's constant companions; namely,  War.

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