CULTURAL NOTES: STORY BEHIND PABLO PICASSO'S GUERNICA

From Vintage News Blog

With the city under curfew, the people of Paris were constantly arrested and interrogated, and Pablo Picasso was no exception. He was particularly harassed by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police.

On one occasion, while the Nazis searched his apartment, a Gestapo officer saw a photograph of one of Picasso’s most famous works, Guernica. 

The 1937 painting depicts the bombing of Guernica, a city in Spain attacked by the German and Italian fascists at the direction of Francisco Franco and the Spanish nationalists. When the Gestapo officer spotted the photograph, he asked Picasso, “Did you do that?” only to receive the artist’s answer: “No, you did.”