Guernica's Scream

On April 26, 1937, German and Italian warplanes bombed the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Pablo Picasso answered with a mural-sized painting, 25 feet wide, that became the most famous anti-war artwork ever made.

There are no planes, no bombs, no named soldiers. Just a horse, a screaming mother, a severed arm. Picasso painted the feeling of the attack, not the report of it.

Protest art is as old as art itself. Egyptian scribes drew cartoons of corrupt officials. Romans scratched insults about their emperors onto city walls.

The line runs straight to today: from Goya's war paintings to Banksy's street stencils, artists keep turning their work into a weapon against power.