April 8, 1973- Pablo Picasso dies
On this day in 1973 Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito was born, better known as Pablo Picasso. While he is known as one of the most prominent artists of the twentieth century, he should also be recognized for his contributions to peace and social justice. He was a pacifist, refusing to fight in any army. He was also an ardent anti-fascist, and used his art to fight his battles.
Perhaps his most enduring contribution to humanity is "Guernica," a painting that depicts the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The German bombing in support of the Fascists killed over 1,000 civlians, but was little known to the outside world before Picasso's painting. "Guernica" toured the world, along with anti-fascist activists, who told the owrld of the horrors of the fascist attacks. The painting has become an enduring symbol of peace. A tapestry copy of the painting hangs outside the Security Council at the United Nations in New York. In February of 2003 United States Secretary of State Colin Powell was at the United Nations giving the George Bush, Jr.'s false premises for war with Iraq. The Bush Administration pressured the U.N. to cover "Guernica" so that people would not see the images of war's destruction while Powell and John Negroponte made their case to invade Iraq.
"The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death."
