Pablo Picasso
stood as one of the 20th century's most celebrated and important artists. His work featured an inimitable style which has inspired many. He worked in many mediums, including collage and gouache, oil and bronze. Picasso also utilized the form of the mural to unique and powerful effect throughout his career.
Guernica
"Guernica" is Picasso's most famous mural and perhaps his most celebrated work. An April 1937 air raid on Guernica, a small town in Basque Country, by German forces killed hundreds of people, outraged the world, and made for a critical event of the Spanish Civil War. It also inspired Picasso to work on the mural. Critics saw the work as prophetic of World War II. "Guernica" teems with images and ideas, which Picasso refused to explain. Art experts have fixated on grasping the meaning of the harlequins which appear throughout the mural.
Bernal's Picasso
"Bernal's Picasso" is the only mural that the artist completed in England. He designed the work while visiting his friend John Desmond Bernal, a famous scientist and professor from Ireland, in the fall of 1950. The piece shows a pairing of an angel and a demon, both winged and adorned with wreaths on their heads. Bernal and Picasso met one another while stranded in London during an unsuccessful British Peace Committee meeting. Picasso created the mural on the wall of Bernal's sitting room.
The Fall of Icarus
UNESCO, or the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, commissioned a mural from Picasso in 1957. He began to devise the work in December of that year and compiled two notebooks' worth of sketches similar to his Bathers series of paintings. He completed the mural in January 1958. The mural consists of 40 large wooden panels on which Picasso painted in acrylic. It shows Picasso's version of the mythological event of the fall of Icarus. "The Forces of Life and the Spirit Triumphing over Evil" was the original title, rechristened later to the current title by George Salles.
WFTU Mural
Pablo Picasso created a mural that he dedicated to the World Federation of Trade Unions' 10th anniversary in 1955. The mural was housed in the world headquarters for the WFTU, located in Prague. Picasso considered the work a declaration of his solidarity with workers worldwide. The mural depicts a giant flower with petals outlined in red, gilded by long and thick streaks of blue and yellow. The work mysteriously disappeared in 1989 and has yet to be recovered.
