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2 pages/≈550 words
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Harvard
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Literature & Language
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English (U.S.)
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An analysis of the "El Guernica" Artefact (Literature & Language Essay)

Essay Instructions:

The essay is a 600-word artefact analysis which should contextualise the cultural artefact. I have chosen the artefact "El Guernica" by Picasso to analyse.
I would like to include 2 parts to the essay;
1) A description - to overview what it is, who created it and the immediate context.
2) An analysis of its symbols. This will consist of its historical gestation (how it emerged), it's circulation (how people became exposed to it and whether it's importance changed its meaning. Was it originally supposed to influence audiences as much as it does now?) and lastly its cultural impact ( what does it represent and reflect on the society)
Within the essay, I would like to discuss the Political aspects of the artefact and its link to the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Period. I would also like to discuss the scale of the artefact in correlation to it's social and historical context.
I will attach a copy of El Guernica, some notes relating to its symbols and a paper I found really useful to research its visual rhetoric and it's political protest.
Lastly, although the essay is very short, I would like to include academic reference from a few different sources.

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An Analysis Of The "El Guernica" Artefact
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An Analysis Of The "El Guernica" Artefact

Introduction
Pablo Picasso's Guernica was produced in 1937 and exhibited by Spain's Republic government-in-exile in Paris at the Exhibition Internationale (Buchanan, 2018). The painting depicts the disastrous nature of war, and it simultaneously speaks of the present and the future. The painting is a description of the 1937's bombing of the Basque town of Gernika through an air raid by Nazi commandos sanctioned by Franco. The original painting is housed at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (Spain). The painting is a political statement that denounces the unnecessary suffering that war brings on people.
Description
Picasso used oil and a palette of monochrome (black, white, and gray colors) to complete the canvas painting. The painting is 3.5 meters tall and 7.77 meters wide, depicting civilians and animals whose lives have been destroyed by war's violence and chaos. The most visible symbols on the painting include a bull, a mother with a dead child, a pigeon, a dead soldier, a light bulb, a horse, an imploring man, and a kneeling woman.
Meaning of Symbols
The bull is among the critical symbols of Spanish culture. Painted with a dark body and a white head, the bull is in a state of shock due to the chaos and horror. Below the bull's image, a sitting mother is clutched on a body of a dead child, facing the sky with tears in her eyes (Lesser, 2011). Being a Catholic country, the image symbolizes a tainted (by war) image of the Virgin and her Child. The pigeon, vaguely located between the bull and the house, is a representation of broken peace. With an incomplete body and a broken sword, the dead soldier vividly depicts what bombs can do to people (Buchanan, 2018). On the other h...
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