Top 10 Guernica Quotes & Sayings

The true symbolism of every facet of 'Guernica' can only be guessed at, but we do know that it haunted Picasso.

The second assault on Fallujah was a monument to brutality and atrocity made in the United States of America. Like the Spanish city of Guernica during the 1930s, and Grozny in the 1990s Fallujah is our monument of excess and overkill.

Artists have their existential questions as human beings, and they address these questions in their works. But they are also thinking in a broader sense when they participate in a social and political debate through their works. Often the most important voices of artists in the political and the social debate are focused on originality in their works. We can see this in historical pieces, like "Guernica" by Picasso. "Guernica" was an extremely important manifestation and critique against war, but it was important and powerful because it was also an incredibly original and powerful work of art.

A German officer visited Picasso in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the modernist «chaos» of the painting, asked Picasso: «Did you do this?» Picasso calmly replied: «No, you did this!»

Art is important because when people start to forget, art reminds them what happened. Like 'Guernica.' People would not remember the tragedy of Guernica today if it were not for that painting.

Would you ask Picasso to explain 'Guernica?' Would you ask Nabokov to explain 'Lolita?' Would you ask Tolstoy about 'War and Peace?' No, you wouldn't dare.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

All of a sudden I got a vision of Guernica - Pablo Picasso's painting, which is one of my all-time favorite paintings in the world. I remember reading that it was very controversial at the time - some people said even used the word "childlike drawing" - and all of a sudden I thought, "This is like Guernica in Los Angeles!" And then it all made sense to me. It was all the elements that are the Southland.

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).

When German soldiers used to come to my studio and look at my pictures of Guernica, they'd ask 'Did you do this?'. And I'd say, 'No, you did.'