Pablo Picasso's large-scale oil painting depicting the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of Franco's Nationalist forces on April 26, 1937. Guernica became the canonical image of civilian suffering under aerial bombardment — reproduced on protest banners, invoked in Security Council debates, and used by movements across the political spectrum as a symbol of the costs of war. Its political life has operated independently of Picasso's biography for decades.
In February 2003, Colin Powell entered the United Nations Security Council to make the case for the Iraq War. Behind him, where Guernica's tapestry reproduction normally hangs, a blue curtain had been installed. The United Nations said it was for better camera framing. Critics said it was because the world's most famous anti-war image was the wrong backdrop for a war argument. Whether or not that was the reason, the decision was significant: seventy years after Picasso painted it, a reproduction of Guernica was still considered politically consequential enough to cover.