Guernica by Pablo Picasso
On this date in 1937, German and Italian bombers at the behest of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (who is STILL dead btw) destroyed the Basque town of Guenrica in an effort to open the hearts and minds of the Spanish Basques towards Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
Prior to the bombing the National Spanish Government (the pre-Franco government) had asked Pablo Picasso to come up with a little something to exhibit at the World's Fair in Paris later in the year. He created his masterpiece, Guernica, for the exhibit, an anti-war protest mural 11 feet high x 25.6 feet wide (3.5 meters x 7.8 meters). It accomplished its goal by focusing world attention for a while on the Spanish Civil War atrocities, but didn't change the fact that Franco still won.
Today, the painting lives at the Museo Reina Sophia in Madrid, across the street from the Prado. Close up it's unsettling, even after a long day of museums and Picasso this and Picasso that. See it if you can, the Reina Sophia is a great museum. Guernica may be it's most famous resident but not the coolest.
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