Pablo Picasso painted "Guernica" in response to the bombing of the Basque city of Guernica.
On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, German and Italian aircraft supporting Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces bombed Guernica. The attack became an international symbol of the danger faced by civilians in modern warfare. Reports of the destruction shocked audiences around the world and inspired Picasso to address the event through art.
Picasso created the enormous black, white, and gray painting for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Rather than illustrating the bombing as a straightforward historical scene, he used fractured Cubist forms: a screaming mother, a fallen soldier, a wounded horse, and a bull. Their exact meanings remain debated, but the painting clearly conveys terror, grief, and the brutality of war.
The city is also spelled Gernika in Basque and Guernica in Spanish and English. The painting later traveled internationally before returning to Spain; it has been displayed at Madrid's Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía since 1992.