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Article: Analyzing political art to get at historical fact: Guernica and the Spanish Civil War.
- Article from:
- The Social Studies
- Article date:
- July 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Artistic depictions of historical events can capture students' imaginations. Art can also be used to develop analytical skills. To give a complete interpretation of any piece of art, one has to consider the context in which it was created. The events and emotions that bring a painting into being are critical to understanding the work as a whole (Martin 2003). This is especially true of political art.
Political art serves as social commentary and protest. No painting better illustrates this than Pablo Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica. Painted in 1937 as a direct response to the Spanish Civil War-era bombing of the small Basque village of Guernica in Spain, the ...