Guernica

A brilliant, concise account of the painting often described as the most important work of art produced in the twentieth century. Pablo Picasso had already accepted a commission in 1937 to create a work for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the Paris World Fair when news arrived of the assault by the German Condor Legion on the undefended Basque town of Guernica, in which hundreds of civilians died. James Attlee offers an illuminating account of the genesis, creation and many-stranded afterlife of Picasso's Guernica.

He explores the historical context from which it sprang; the artistic influences that informed its execution; the critical responses that it elicited; its journeyings across Europe and America in the late 1930s; its post-war adoption by new generations of anti-war protestors; and its eventual return to Spain following the death of Franco.