Guernica is one of Picasso's most famous paintings; some regard it as his best painting. It's a mural that's 11 feet 6 inches high and 25 feet 8 inches wide (3,5 x 7,76 meters) in size, and Picasso painted it on commission for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World Fair in Paris.
Guernica shows the bombing during the Spanish Civil War by Nazi Germany of the Basque city of Guernica on 26 April 1937 in support of the Francisco Franco's Nationalists. This has entered military history as the first-ever aerial bombarbment of a city; around 1,600 people were killed and some 900 injured.
Picasso's painting doesn't focus on the actual bombing, but instead the horrors of war and the misery that results. The symbolism he used includes a dying horse, a woman caught in a burning building, and an anguished mother with a dead child.
After the world fair, Picasso offered the painting to the Basque people, but was turned down. The painting was then exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, then at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, then in various venues around the US, Brazil, and Europe, eventually heading back to Moma in New York.
As Picasso insisted that Guernica wasn't to be exhibited in Spain until democracy has been established in the country, the painting didn't "go home" until 1981. It was initially placed in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, then in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. Campaigners hope to have it moved to Guernica itself, or at least to the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum.
