Massacre in Korea
| Massacre in Korea (Massacre en Corée) |
|---|
| Pablo Picasso , 1951 |
| Oil on plywood |
| 110 × 210 cm |
| Picasso Museum, Paris
Link to the picture |
Massacre in Korea (French: Massacre en Corée ) is the title of an oil painting by the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso from 1951. It belongs to the collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris.
Description and background
The work, dominated by gray tones, shows on the left a group of four frightened-looking naked women with their children looking for help. Two of the women are pregnant. Opposite them on the right is a group of soldiers, some of them naked and some in armor, whose faces are made unrecognizable by helmets. Their rifles, some of which have three barrels, are aimed at the women and children. The warrior standing on the far right, half turned away, swings a sword at the group of women. A mountain and valley landscape with a river that divides the picture in the middle, as well as a still burning ruin on the mountain form the background.
Picasso painted the picture in 1951 with reference to the massacre in the North Korean province of Sinchon during the Korean War . It should be seen as a criticism of the US intervention and should generally set an example against war. An earlier anti-war picture was taken in 1937 with the painting Guernica , after the bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica.
Image quotes
In the composition Picasso refers to Francisco de Goya's The Shooting of the Insurgents (1814), which shows the execution of Spanish insurgents in Madrid on the orders of the commanding officer of the French occupation forces.
He chooses a rectangular picture format and a triptych as a composition. The woman with open arms in the middle of the women's group quotes the Christian iconography of Jesus .
Web links
- Massacre in Korea, 1951 by Pablo Picasso on www.pablopicasso.org (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Massacre en Corée , histoire-geographie-college.fr, accessed on June 14, 2014