Beatriz Cordero Martín

For Americans living in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War was the definitive sign of the spread of fascism in Europe. Concurrently, it became a particularly attractive topic for American artists and writers, a phenomenon that resulted in no small part from the unequal nature of the struggle and the romanticization of Spain in nineteenth-century art and literature. The display of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937)at the Museum of Modern Art from 1939 to 1981 tapped into this preoccupation, captivated the public, and transformed one artistic interpretation of a specific attack on civilians into a universal icon for peace. This project aims to investigate the impact that the Spanish Civil War had on American artists from an ideological point of view. It analyzes how artistic representations of the subject evolved as US politics became more international in scope during the second half of the twentieth century. This study will also consider the significance of Guernica for artists working in the United States and the ways in which Spanish artists encouraged formal experimentation among their American peers.