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Picasso already planned to create a work of art on behalf of Spain’s elected Republic government for the Spanish Pavillion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris when news of the mass civilian bombings in Guernica reached him.

The Nazi’s, who struck a deal with Franco, attacked Guernica for three hours, dropping 100,000 pounds of bombs. Nearly two-thirds of the 5,000 citizens were killed or wounded. For the Nazi’s, this was an experiment to determine if ordinary citizens could be bombed into submission, a pre-curser to their Blitzkreig strategy during WWII.  For Franco, it was an attempt to win the Spanish Civil War, remove the elected Republic government and establish himself as the country’s dictator.

Horrified and infuriated by the events, Picasso, who by now had been living in Paris for 30 years, made his first sketches the day he learned of the tragedy. Setting into motion his World’s Fair project, Guernica went on to become the modern art masterpiece that for more than 65 years has served as a vivid reminder of the brutality of war.