Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and the Iraq War

An Account & Poem

by Gregg Mosson

 

 

At an antiwar march on March 20, 2004 in New York City, peace activists carry paper figures based on Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica.

 

 

 

 

Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in response to the Nazi bombing of the Spanish town Guernica in April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.  Today the painting hangs in the Prado Museum in Spain.

 

Guernica’s fragmented bodies and open-mouthed faces have appeared often during peace marches since the U.S.-Iraq war began on March 19, 2003.  A tapestry rendition of Picasso’s Guernica was placed outside the United Nations Security Council in 1976.

 

During the infamous United Nations speech by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arguing for invasion of Iraq—a blue curtain covered up this Guernica tapestry.  The curtain hid Guernica from reporters and cameras waiting to question Powell and others when they exited the U.N. Security Council.

 

Art is a form of memory.  That speech that day was not about proving, but forgetting.

 

A World Without Picasso’s Guernica

February 5, 2003

At the United Nations, blue drapes sheath

a tapestry rendition of Guernica, so speakers can paint

blitzkrieging dreams, burying screams affixed and aired;

killing machines can work again.

 

Who expunged Guernica from the U.N.,

and then did U.N. walls tremor

down to their foundation

in the "war to end all wars"

and covetous twentieth century?

 

Yesterday, today, or tomorrow

bombs drop and discombobulated body parts

hurl through the air, and brown limbs

burst from horses

and spin past a still-standing bystander

dumbstruck

as infernos smoke and buildings crumble.