Which artist painted, "Guernica"?

Pablo Picasso painted “Guernica.”

Picasso created the monumental oil painting in Paris in 1937 after the bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in northern Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Nazi Germany’s Condor Legion and Fascist Italy’s air force supported the attack, which caused widespread civilian suffering. The Spanish Republican government had commissioned Picasso to create a work for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, and he transformed that commission into a powerful protest against war.

The painting’s stark black, white, and gray palette, distorted bodies, anguished faces, wounded horse, bull, grieving mother, and fallen soldier convey chaos without showing the bombing as a literal scene. Its immense size—about 3.5 meters high and 7.8 meters wide—helped give it the force of a public monument. Picasso completed it in roughly five weeks, with photographer Dora Maar documenting its progress.

A common mix-up is confusing the painting with the town or the bombing itself: “Guernica” is Picasso’s artwork, named for the event. It is now displayed at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía, after spending decades abroad, including a long period at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.