June 1937

Guernica (Picasso)

Pablo Picasso completes Guernica in his Paris studio

The most famous image of an air raid contains neither an airplane nor a bomb — and a camera watched every figure Picasso added and removed on the way there.

Five weeks at 7 rue des Grands-Augustins

Picasso finished Guernica on 4 June 1937 at his Paris studio, concluding work begun on 1 May. The month-only listing hides that date.

The finished mural was oil on canvas, 349.3 by 776.6 centimetres — more than seven and a half metres wide — made for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the Paris International Exposition.

The Republic had commissioned a work for the pavilion; after seeing press photographs and reports of the German aerial attack on Gernika of 26 April, Picasso abandoned his earlier ideas and made the bombing the catalyst.

Dora Maar's camera in the studio

Dora Maar documented the painting's changing composition from 11 May through 4 June. The Museo Reina Sofía holds 28 photographs from the series.

The record shows figures removed, poses altered, and experiments abandoned along the way — unusually detailed evidence of how the canvas arrived at its final state.

Finished, but not yet seen

The canvas carries no literal aircraft and no bombs. The Museo Reina Sofía describes it as transcending the specific event into a broader indictment of war.

It did not meet the public on the day it was completed. The International Exposition had already opened on 24 May, but the Spanish Pavilion was still under construction and did not open until 12 July.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1937-06-04.

What the sources leave uncertain

Authoritative museum catalogues independently identify 4 June 1937 as the completion date.
Some accounts loosely say that the painting was moved to the pavilion on 4 June. Other documentation places its transfer or installation later in June, so same-day movement should not be asserted without qualification.