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A military action and the artistic response that it engendered are the topics of this absorbing narrative. In late April 1937, Guernica, a remote Basque town in northern Spain, was pounded by Hitler's Luftwaffe in support of Francisco Franco's fascist insurgents. In the carnage that ensued, more than 1,600 civilians are killed or wounded. When the news reached Paris, world-famous painter Pablo Picasso decided to express his outrage and sorrow on canvas. The result is arguably the most famous painting of the 20th century.
Publishers Weekly
Picasso watched closely from his adopted Paris as the Spanish Civil War unfolded, and when German bombers leveled the Basque village of Guernica, the previously apolitical Picasso felt stirred to action. Created at a frenzied pace, his painting Guernica was both homage to his Catalonian homeland and a scathing indictment of bloodshed. While Martin (Beethoven's Hair) meticulously describes the painting's creation and context, much of the book focuses on the controversies that haunted the canvas for decades. When Guernica was first introduced at the Spanish pavilion of the 1937 International Exposition of Art and Technology Applied to Modern Life in Paris, it was ignored by many, criticized by others for ugliness-and even for not being political enough. Later acknowledged as a classic, it was housed in New York's Museum of Modern Art, safe from the war overseas. By the '60s, voices grew stronger asking for its return to Spain, the country that had originally commissioned its creation. With Franco still in power, an aging Picasso asked that the painting go to Spain only when the country was once again free from oppression. Within this larger narrative, Martin weaves a memoir of his own trek to visit Guernica, which finally arrived in Spain in the 1980s. The culmination of this thread, when Martin coincidentally views the painting on September 11, 2001, brings the narrative into the contemporary world and highlights Guernica's brutal relevance today. (Oct. 28) Forecast: Martin's Out of Silence: An Autistic Boy's Journey into Language and Communication (1994) was widely reviewed and acclaimed, and Beethoven's Hair (2000) was a Washington Post Book of the Year and a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Look for strong national reviews, many of which will use the book as a springboard to discuss more recent political art (and the lack thereof). Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Picasso's "Guernica" was painted in reaction to the barbarous Nazi bombing of the Basque village in Spain in 1937. Martin (Beethoven's Hair) extensively researched the circumstances surrounding the creation of this painting and the attention it has continued to command. On 9/11 he was in Madrid viewing "Guernica"; here he has collaged his response to the attacks in New York City with his feelings about the painting. In the face of such terrible loss, it may be reasonable to parallel the two horrific events; however, Martin mixes fact and opinion with his personal reminiscences. Picasso's politics were ambiguous at best; while he joined the Communist Party to please his friends after World War II, he became disillusioned with Stalin in the 1950s. Picasso said, when asked, in typical fashion, that painting was his party. "Guernica's" historical significance as possibly "the last great history painting" gets lost here, begging the question is it politics, art, or tragedy that is Martin's focus? He discusses visuals yet provides no illustrations, such as the photographs Dora Maar took of Picasso working on "Guernica" or the preparatory drawings. This effort will not satisfy the thoughtful reader, and it skimps on production. For a contrasting perspective on Picasso and "Guernica," try James Lord's Picasso and Dora. You can pass on this one. Ellen Bates, New York Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Imaginative cultural historian Martin (Beethoven’s Hair, 2000, etc.) crafts a well-integrated and fascinating account of Picasso’s famous painting and the horrible events that inspired it.
The author’s signature approach to seemingly offbeat subjects is careful research filtered through a novelistic sensibility to grasp the inherent story, which he unfolds in the engaging, almost offhand manner of a fictional amateur sleuth. Martin is, first and foremost, a consummate storyteller who deftly weaves such multiple disciplines as politics, history, art, science, and even current events into a narrative forming a coherent whole. A case in point is his handling here of the motivation behind Picasso’s change of heart regarding his previous, adamantly apolitical stance on the Spanish Civil War, then only a few months old. Commissioned by a Republican delegation to devise a prominent work for the courtyard of the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, Picasso, who disdained "poster" (i.e., political) art, originally contemplated a mural whose subject would be the artist in his studio. But the brutal attack on the civilian population of the Basque town Gernika, intended by Franco and his Nazi allies to inspire terror and capitulation, had an energizing effect on the artist. Within two weeks of Gernika’s bombardment and strafing by Goering’s Luftwaffe, Picasso was hard at work on the monumental canvas that was to become the most political artwork of the 20th century. Martin goes beyond the obvious, however, in providing additional, less well-known motives for Picasso’s sudden engagement. Having agreed to become the titular director of the Museo del Prado in September of the previousyear, the artist was outraged by Franco’s barbaric disregard for the safety of the nation’s treasures and quietly agreed to their removal to safety in Valencia.
An engrossing story of a landmark work of art and the struggle "to fashion meaning out of unimaginable evil, once more to offer hope."
