![]() ![]() ![]() Thousands of American, French, and British soldiers joined the Republican army, including, famously, George Orwell, who wrote of his experience in Homage to Catalonia (1938), “Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. During the war, Franco was supported by Hitler and Mussolini, while the Soviet Union aided the Republicans. The Republic had come into power after Spain’s king was deposed in 1931, and it lasted until its defeat by General Franco’s forces in 1939. The Spanish Civil War pitted the rebelling alliance of Fascists, Monarchists, and Catholics against the Anarchists, Basques, and Republicans of the Second Spanish Republic based in Catalonia. Yet the bombing was far from the only despicable crime in a battle that foreshadowed Europe’s loyalties before World War II. The atrocity was one of the first instances of aviation being criminally used to target civilians, a dangerous precursor of what was to befall Europe soon after. It strips figures to their bare, broken forms to articulate the fragility of naked bodies decimated by this new kind of destruction. Built on harsh geometries and monochromes, his painting is terrifyingly apprehensive. ![]() PICASSO PAINTED Guernica after Spanish general Francisco Franco ordered the Nazis and Italian Fascists to bomb the Basque town of Guernica in 1937. ![]()
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