Pablo Picasso and Guernica

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881. He was the son of Maria Picasso Lopez and Jose Ruiz Blasco, an artist and teacher at San Telmo school of arts and industrial design. By the age of fifteen, Pablo was already technically skilled in drawing and painting, under the teachings of his father. Picasso's highly original style incessantly evolved throughout his long career, escalating the meaning of what art could be.
It was market day in Guernica, when the church bells of Santa Maria echoed the city that afternoon in 1937. For over three hours, twenty-five or more of Germany's best-equipped bombers, led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, dumped one hundred thousand pounds of high-explosive and combustible bombs on the village, slowly and steadily pounding it to rubble. Approximately 1,700 of Guernica's 5,000 residents were killed or wounded. The fires that engulfed the city burned for three days
Eyewitness reports fill the front pages of Paris papers. The...