Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon (Paperback)

~ Gijs van Hensbergen (Author) "In late August 1934 Picasso returned from Paris to Spain, with his wife Olga and their son Paulo, to follow the bulls..." (more)
Key Phrases: contemporary art museum, New York, United States, Reina Sofia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the runup to the Iraq War, U.N. officials in New York hid a mural version of Pablo Picasso's painting depicting the 1936 fascist terror bombing of the Basque town of Gernika (as it is spelled in Basque) under a tasteful blue shroud—testifying to its continuing power. An acclaimed biographer of Gaudí, van Hensbergen turns in the definitive study of Picasso's antiwar masterpiece, which folds the disciplines of art criticism, political history and biography into a passionate, detailed and well-argued narrative. Beginning with a superb account of the work's genesis, both within the career of Picasso and against the terrible events of the Spanish Civil War, van Hensbergen not only helps us to understand the motifs and structures underlying the artist's great work but places them within the context of his life as a Spaniard in exile. The subsequent "career" of the work is also illuminated, from its journey across the Atlantic—where it became a pivotal influence on postwar American painting—to its resonance as a symbol of resistance to the long reign of General Franco and its place in the national reconciliations that took place after Franco's death. To be an icon of any kind is to court the risk of overfamiliarity; van Hensbergen's beautifully written and usefully illustrated book restores the lustrous and terrible beauty of a major cultural work.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

To this day, there is scarcely a protest march in which Picasso's "Guernica" does not appear, perpetually revived in times of raw brutality. Picasso's great assault on barbarism is, as the title of Gijs van Hensbergen's book describes it, a 20th-century icon. Van Hensbergen's account of its gestation and its final destiny in Madrid joins previous publications by Rudolph Arnheim, Herschel B. Chipp and Frank D. Russell, examining in minute detail both the circumstances of the painting's creation and the power of its imagery. Van Hensbergen, however, focuses less on its artistic merits and more on the role it has played in the world's psyche.

The event that galvanized Picasso was the three-hour incendiary bombardment of the small Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, by Italian and German planes, an attack that turned the town into "a burning fireball." Days later, Picasso began work on his passionate riposte, as a defender of the legitimate Republican government. Like other European intellectuals, he recognized the ominous significance of Europeans using saturation bombing on defenseless European citizens -- the first declaration, as the Nazis proclaimed, that there are no innocent civilians in total war.

Picasso's prodigious painting was exhibited, along with works by Miró and Gonzalez, among others, in the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Expo in Paris. Van Hensbergen, who has also written a biography of the architect Antinio Gaudi, gives the most complete account to date of the elaborate and difficult preparations for the Expo made by the besieged Spanish government, and the varied responses to its dramatic visual offerings. He enlarges our perception of the cultural circumstances and admirably sums up Picasso's engagement: "Guernica was his homeland, his waste land, his burnt-out pile."

Once the Expo was over, "Guernica" began its astonishing tour throughout Europe, and to Brazil and the United States, to alert the world to the catastrophe and to raise funds for the victims of Franco's atrocities. When it arrived in New York, it became a matter of capital importance to American artists who had long recognized Picasso as a master. Local painters thronged to see it exhibited in a Manhattan gallery, where they also attended two symposia in the painting's presence. Van Hensbergen quotes the painter Dorothea Tanning describing hearing Arshile Gorky, one of New York's most charismatic painters: "We listened as a gaunt, intense, young man, with an enormous Nietzschean moustache . . . talked about the picture. . . . I believe he talked about intentions and fury and tenderness and the suffering of the Spanish people. He would point out a strategic line, and follow it into battle, as it clashed on the far side of the picture with a spiky chaos. He did not, during the entire evening, smile. It was as if he could not."

There is no doubt that the burgeoning New York movement called abstract expressionism was inspirited by this encounter with "Guernica." Van Hensbergen dwells too much on Jackson Pollock, suggesting he was Picasso's heir, and attempts with limited success to probe the painting's influence on New York painters. But more interesting is his account of the FBI's zealous surveillance (187 pages of it in Picasso's FBI file), beginning with J. Edgar Hoover's instructions to the U.S. embassy in Paris in 1945: "In the event information concerning Picasso comes to your attention, it should be furnished to the Bureau in view of the possibility that he may attempt to come to the United States." In fact, Picasso was never permitted to come here because of his communist ties.

Especially good on Franco's postwar Spain, van Hensbergen is well-informed on the artistic underground; on Franco's attempt to use young Spanish vanguard artists as pawns in his political maneuvers with Europe and the United States; and on horrifying events such as the sacking of an art gallery exhibiting Picasso's graphic work by the right-wing terrorist group Guerilleros del Cristo Rey in 1971 (only last year they tried to storm a cultural center in Madrid!). Finally, he details the elaborate and controversial moves toward repatriating "Guernica" after Franco's death, and its triumphal entry into Madrid on Sept. 10, 1981.

The fate of "Guernica" was yoked to the fate of Picasso's legacy. In his family memoir, the painter's grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso, offers an exhaustive account of each of the heirs' positions, actions and legal battles, and of their attitudes toward Spain immediately after Franco. For instance, Maya, Olivier's mother, suggested putting off the transfer until there was sure evidence that Spain had indeed become a republic, as Picasso had stipulated. The author has traced every legal meeting and the results, offering for the first time a total account of the settling of the Picasso estate, and, as a corollary, the final disposition of "Guernica."

The younger Picasso comes across as the genial grandson who takes it upon himself to save the great painter's honor by carefully refuting many of the slanderous attacks printed during the past 20 years. Like his grandfather, Widmaier Picasso detests gossip. As a trained lawyer, he knows the value of documenting, and has probed his grandfather's practical and amorous life with the keen eye of an evidence-gatherer.

His account will also be valuable to historians interested in Picasso's political positions. In careful, measured terms, he describes the artist's lifelong interest in oppositional, radical causes, and unlike most American commentators, he takes the trouble to describe the circumstances under which Picasso joined the French Communist Party. "You see," he quotes Picasso as saying, "I am not French but Spanish. I am against Franco. The only way I could make it known was by joining the Communist Party, thus proving I belonged to the other side." The cultural climate within which Picasso made his decision, after World War II, was far from being the monolithic entity so easily attacked by North American critics, and the author strives to set his grandfather's gesture within its properly complex circumstances.

Reviewed by Dore Ashton
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (October 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582346062
• ISBN-13: 978-1582346069
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #160,713 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Learned, Fascinating Paean to the Importance of GUERNICA, February 23, 2005

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon (Hardcover)

Gijs van Hensbergen has contributed a fine volume to the libraries of books on the Atrocity of War, on the History of Spain under Franco's dictatorship, on the influence of Pablo Picasso on the development of the US as an art center after centuries of living in the shadow of Europe, of the Development of the very American art school of Abstract Expressionism, of the
rise and fall of Communism and its attendant 'McCarthy Era' of American isolationism, and ultimately of the journey of the infamous painting 'Guernica' from its creation in Paris to its world tour, its home in New York's Museum of Modern Art to its eventual return to the country that stimulated its creation - the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

Long first sentence: long journey. The author of this fascinating book packs so much information into the well-illustrated story that 'Guernica' reads like a novel yet informs like a treatise. Initially painted by Picasso in 1937 in response to Franco's Nazi-assisted 'training lab' annihilation of the city of Gernika in the Basque region of Spain. 'Guernica" has become a symbol of the atrocity of war, the capability of man's inhumanity to man, and the global fear of self-destruction if we are not more in guardianship of the forces of war machines that continue to grind down the surface of this planet.

van Hensbergen writes so well that the amount of information contained in this readable tome never overwhelms: it is just there as backup for every statement he makes. He firmly believes that 'Guernica' is the most important painting of the 20th Century, not only because of its critical breakthrough in the art world of the changes in representation (the Cubist movement), nor because of the rally against totalitarian force wherever it occurs (including the My-Lai atrocity with which the US bruised mankind in the Vietnam conflict, etc), but also because of the profound impact this painting had upon entering the USA, in easy access to the artists who responded to its power by developing the first truly original American art movement - Abstract Expressionism.

It is often said that the artist is the ultimate philosopher. Nowhere is this better stated than in this absorbing book about the power of a single painting on the course of history in the 2oth Century. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, February 2005

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Arguably The Century's Greatest Painting, January 14, 2005

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon (Hardcover)

"No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It's an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy." So said Pablo Picasso, as World War II was ending. He must have reflected at the time that even the most famous painting-as-weapon had not really made a difference in a previous war or the current one. Still, his _Guernica_ had made an impression, and it still does. When war against Iraq was being considered, the United Nations's huge tapestry reproduction of the painting (originally made for Nelson Rockefeller, and donated by him to the UN) was covered up. A plain blue background was needed for the broadcasters in the building, said a UN spokesman; you won't be able to pull a cover on the upcoming carnage in Iraq, said an Australian delegate. In _Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon_ (Bloomsbury) Gijs van Hensbergen has given a readable summary of both the art and the politics of the painting, from the history of the Spanish Civil War and the heinous bombing that it depicts to its eventual return to the Spanish republic. There is thus plenty of twentieth century history here, and art theory, and biography of the most influential painter of the century. It is all wonderfully well integrated and fascinating.

In 1937, Picasso was in Paris when he heard of the atrocity of the firebombing of Gernika (Basque spelling), far behind the lines and without military connections, arranged by Franco and carried out by the Nazis as an initial experiment in what we have come to know as "total war." He had procrastinated on a commission for the Paris Expo, but in a frenzy of inspiration, he drew his first sketches and five weeks later had completed the painting. After the Expo, the painting began its extensive travels, with the aim of giving support to the anti-fascists in Spain. Picasso refused to let it go anywhere in Spain until "a genuine Spanish republic had been restored." Picasso was satisfied with _Guernica_ settling in New York: "By means of _Guernica_ I have the pleasure of making a political statement every day in the middle of New York." But as a communist, his work was suspect, and the references to Franco and the Spanish Civil War were dropped from the label at the Museum of Modern Art. J. Edgar Hoover asked specifically that the US Embassy in Paris send any info on Picasso, even though the FBI had no business trying to get dirt on foreigners. The file on Picasso included asinine whoppers such as the accusation that he was a Russian spy. A congressman from Michigan state seems to have assumed a Rush Limbaugh-like role as radio commentator, railing against Picasso as "the hero of all the crackpots in so-called modern art" and that "critics who support modern art should be attended to."

Picasso died in 1973, and Franco in 1975. Franco had been increasingly ill and distant from actual power, and Picasso's work had gradually been allowed to be shown within Spain. Poster reproductions of _Guernica_ were popular. Picasso had not lost his bite, and gallery owners had to worry about vandalism, some of the worries proving to be entirely justified. The final section of the book deals with the difficult and labyrinthine negotiations to bring the painting back to the home it had never known. Politicians, lawyers, Basques, city boosters, and heirs all had to have their say, but eventually under extreme security, the massive canvass made a triumphal entry into Madrid in 1981, originally installed in a huge, guarded box of bullet-proof glass. One commentator observed, "Today the last exile has returned to Spain." That is the sort of tribute and the degree of importance attributed to _Guernica_ repeatedly through the book. Its detractors, frequently quoted here, may be many, and its influence in actually stopping war may be nil. It will forever haunt us, though, like a conscience that insists that someday war ought to be no more.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary passions, June 27, 2005

By	Ms. Alexandra C. Coulter - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon (Hardcover)

Van Hensbergen's Guernica is a must-read masterpiece that covers art, history,passion and politics in equal measure. From war time France, through Franco's Spain,and on through the trials of McCarthyism to Guernica's eventual repatriation the writer doesn't miss a beat. I was stunned and excited by the new revelations about Picasso and extraordinary insights into the passions that underpin Picasso's astonishing and shocking work.