Created at · 1937
7 rue des Grands-Augustins
Painted in the attic studio between 1 May and 4 June 1937, with Dora Maar photographing the stages. The Reina Sofía's Rethinking Guernica archive documents the studio and the five-week timeline.
Painting
Guernica
Picasso's mural-sized response to the bombing of the Basque town of Gernika, painted in five weeks in his Paris studio for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the 1937 World's Fair. Now in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
- 1 May – 4 June 1937
- Oil on canvas
- Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofíaMadrid, Spain
About Pablo Picasso
A commission waiting for a subject
In early 1937 the government of the Spanish Republic, fighting the civil war against Franco, commissioned Pablo Picasso to paint a mural for its pavilion at the Paris World's Fair that summer. For months he had no subject.
On 26 April 1937 German and Italian aircraft flying for Franco bombed Gernika, a Basque market town, on a market afternoon. Reports and photographs reached Paris within days. Picasso began the mural on 1 May.
Five weeks at 7 rue des Grands-Augustins
Picasso painted the canvas in his newly rented studio in the attic of 7 rue des Grands-Augustins, a seventeenth-century hôtel on the Left Bank — a room so low that the eleven-foot canvas had to lean at an angle. He finished on 4 June: five weeks for a painting almost eight metres wide.
Dora Maar photographed the work at each stage, leaving the most complete photographic record of any modern painting's making. The studio had a literary past Picasso enjoyed: Balzac had set his story The Unknown Masterpiece, about a painter destroyed by an impossible picture, in the same building.
What is happening in the picture
There is no aircraft and no bomb. The space is shallow, and the palette is black, white and grey, closer to newsprint than to sky. A bull stands over a screaming woman holding her dead child. A horse convulses around a spear wound; a dismembered soldier grips a broken sword. A woman falls through a burning house, and another rushes in with a lamp, under a bare electric bulb shaped like an eye.
Picasso refused to assign the figures fixed meanings, saying the public should see what it saw. The refusal has kept the painting arguable, and useful, through every war since.
Exile at MoMA, return to Madrid
After the fair, Guernica toured Europe and the Americas raising money for Spanish refugees. From 1939 it stayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on Picasso's instruction that it not enter Spain while public liberties there were suppressed. It reached Madrid only in 1981, six years after Franco's death, and has hung since 1992 in the Museo Reina Sofía.
The painting no longer travels: its condition, and its status in Spain, keep it in the Reina Sofía permanently.
Close reading
Reading the work, detail by detail
These six views follow the painting's cries, lights, and broken bodies. The available reproduction is small, so the enlargements clarify the composition rather than individual brushstrokes.
1.Mother and child
The mother's lifted face and open mouth oppose the child's hanging head. Their sharply different directions make grief readable through posture before any symbolic interpretation is needed.
2.The bull
The broad head and pointed horns form a relatively stable shape above the twisting bodies. Its watchful eye introduces a disturbing stillness within the surrounding distress.
3.The wounded horse
The stretched neck pulls upward while the body breaks into angular planes. Short marks across its flank give this large central form a restless texture.
4.Two kinds of light
The jagged halo around the bulb differs from the small flame beside it. Both illuminate the scene, but neither creates a calm or coherent space for the figures beneath.
5.The broken sword
The snapped blade compresses violence into an object small enough to miss in the larger scene. The delicate flower beside it offers a fragile counterpoint without resolving the destruction.
6.Arms raised at the edge
The hands repeat the upward motion of the head and arms at the opposite end. At the edge of the canvas, this gesture helps enclose the whole scene within cries of distress.
Where to see it
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Calle Santa Isabel 52, 28012 Madrid, Spain
The painting arrived in Spain in 1981 and moved to the Reina Sofía in 1992. Displays change, so check the museum's own object record before making a special visit.
Plan your visit on the museum’s official website (opens in a new tab)Frequently asked questions
Why did Picasso paint Guernica?
The Spanish Republic had commissioned a mural from him for its pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair. The bombing of the Basque town of Gernika on 26 April 1937, by German and Italian aircraft flying for Franco, gave the commission its subject. He started painting five days later.
Where was Guernica painted?
In Paris, in Picasso's studio in the attic of 7 rue des Grands-Augustins, between 1 May and 4 June 1937. The room was barely tall enough: the canvas, three and a half metres high, had to lean at an angle while he worked.
What do the bull and the horse in Guernica mean?
Picasso declined to say, insisting the public should read the picture for itself. The screaming horse at the centre is usually read as the suffering of the people, and the impassive bull as brutality, Spain, or both. But the painting is built to resist a single key: there is no aircraft and no named enemy in it.
Where is Guernica now?
In the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, since 1992. It reached Spain only in 1981 — Picasso had barred it from entering the country under Franco — and spent the war and postwar decades at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
How big is Guernica?
349 by 776 centimetres — about 11.5 by 25.5 feet — painted in oil in black, white and greys. The mural format was set by the wall it was made for: the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair.
In the atlas
Associated with · 1937
Modern Art
Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in Paris between May and June 1937, after German and Italian aircraft supporting Franco bombed the Basque town on 26 April. Nearly eight metres wide and worked only in black, white and grey, it became an internationally circulating image of civilian suffering.
More by Pablo Picasso
Painting · Rose PeriodBoy with a PipePainting · Analytic CubismDaniel-Henry KahnweilerPainting · Return to OrderHead of a WomanSculpture · CubismHead of a Woman (Fernande)Painting · Return to orderGrande baigneusePainting · Return to OrderMother and ChildBalletParadePainting · Rose Period · toward CubismGertrude SteinPainting · Blue PeriodThe Old GuitaristPainting · Return to OrderThree Women at the SpringPainting · Surrealist periodWoman in a Red ArmchairPainting · Modern ArtLes Demoiselles d'Avignon
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References
References
The sources below include collection records, catalogues, scholarly research, and primary materials that informed this page. They document Guernica, its making, and its place in cultural history.
1Picasso's Studio, 7 rue Grands Augustins, Paris — Rethinking Guernica
WebsiteMuseo Reina SofíaUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Guernica page.
2Guernica at the Paris World's Fair of 1937 — Rethinking Guernica
WebsiteMuseo Reina SofíaUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Guernica page.
3The arrival of Guernica to the Museo Reina Sofía — Rethinking Guernica
WebsiteMuseo Reina SofíaUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Guernica page.
480 years since its Expo 1937 debut, Guernica's message still resonates
WebsiteBureau International des ExpositionsUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Guernica page.
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Why these sources are here
These references provide the documented foundation for this work's history and interpretation. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
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