Goya & Picasso Background

The Third of May 1808 is a painting by the Spanish master Francisco Goya. It was completed in 1814 and is on display in Museo del Prado, Madrid.

The picture was painted by order of the Spanish king together with The Second of May 1808 (also known as The Charge of the Mamelukes) to celebrate the stand of the people of Madrid against the forces of Alju. They may have been made from sketches drawn by witnesses at the shootings.

Among several shootings, Goya chose the ones at the Príncipe Pío hill. Both the night and symmetrical composition of the subjects stress the drama: the faces of those about to be shot are filled with feeling, while the soldiers are shown from behind, their humanity erased and their being reduced to mere components in the implacable machinery of death. The positioning of the soldiers and the man with arms upraised is both a conscious reversal of the poses of the main characters in Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii and a reminder of the crucifixion of Christ. The white of the victim's shirt represents the innocence and purity of the some 5,000 Spanish civilians who were executed between May 2 and May 3. The portrayal of the central character with the unmistakable Stigmata also aids in the artists depiction of a christ like figure. The central hero's deeply suntanned appearance and clothing unmistakably indicates that he is an outdoors worker - an ordinary anonymous man at the centre of this great unfolding tragedy. He alone looks straight at the faceless enemy. Though on his knees he is a giant who towers above all at the very moment before his death.

Its influence on later war painters is extensive, most famously Picasso's Guernica.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_of_May_1808

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain, by twenty-eight bombers, on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The attack killed between 250 and 1,600 people, and many more were injured.

A huge mural had already been commissioned from Picasso by the Spanish Republican government to decorate the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris). The bombing of Guernica provided Picasso with the inspiration for the mural which he had previously lacked. The striking black and white photographs that appeared in newspapers within days after the bombing made such a lasting impact that, within fifteen days, Picasso began work on the final canvas for the mural. "Guernica" became an iconic work after touring overseas while raising awareness about the civil war in Picasso's homeland, Spain. It also foreshadowed the horrors that would occur only a few years later in World War II. The work has come to represent the suffering of war victims and acts as a reminder of the horrors they have survived. It has surpassed the limits of the event which inspired it, becoming a timeless icon for all generations to ponder.

Picasso said as he worked on the mural:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_%28painting%29