Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid/© 2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
It is revealed in "Gernika, 1937: The Market Day Massacre" by Xavier Irujo that coordinated airstrikes that levelled Guernica and killed around 1500 of its citizens was planned by Nazi minister Hermann Göring as a gift for Hitler’s birthday that year. Picasso's painting: Guernica was his response to this terrible event and John Richardsons review of the book provides some insights into the making of that great painting, and the reactions at the time, by the Spanish, the French and the Germans. The painting is now installed at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofìa in Madrid and recently seeing it there for the first time, it raised the old and, for me, unresolved questions of art and politics.
Picasso said at the time: “Artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to a conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/05/12/a-different-guernica/?email_share=1