Picasso's War by Russell Martin

A cry of outrage and horror amplified by genius

On 10 September 1981 a stout crate, simply labelled "Large Painting", arrived in Madrid on an Iberia flight from New York. Inside, wrapped round a padded wooden drum, was Picasso's Guernica. Total secrecy had accompanied its arrival, but by the time it reached the Prado helicopters hovered overhead and a crowd had gathered. After 44 years, this savage indictment of brutality – commissioned by the Spanish government, inspired by the bombing of a historic Basque town in the Civil War and produced in Paris – had come home. As the crate disappeared inside, onlookers broke into applause.

Certain great paintings accumulate incredible histories. The Ghent altarpiece spent time in an Austrian salt-mine courtesy of the Nazis; the Mona Lisa lay hidden for two years beneath floorboards in a Paris bedsit. Though Guernica has never been seriously imperilled, it has travelled widely and, as Russell Martin shows, triggered a huge range of reactions while continuing to operate as a symbol of protest against oppression.

Shortly after its appearance in the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair, Guernica went on an odyssey: touring Scandinavia, Britain and the US before being grounded by the war in New York, where it remained in the Museum of Modern Art. In London, it was shown in the West End and at the Whitechapel Gallery. The art critic Herbert Read saw in it "a cry of outrage and horror amplified by the spirit of genius". He argued that "Not only Guernica, but Spain; not only Spain, but Europe, is symbolised in this allegory". In its wake came the bombing of Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw and Dresden.

In this well-conceived and intelligently felt book, Russell Martin skilfully summarises the historical context. Hitler had been advised that Spain could become a Fascist stronghold if the generals in revolt against the Republican government were given military assistance. A phalanx of Nazi bombers blitzed Guernica for two hours on market day, strafing fleeing civilians with machine-guns before returning with incendiary bombs to raze the centre of town.

Picasso went into action after press reports revealed the extent of the tragedy. The fury it unleashed is evident in his earliest sketches. But as his ideas developed, every ingredient was subjected to dispassionate analysis. For this former Cubist, illusionism was not on the agenda, and out went the possibility of anecdote or reportage. Instead, he employs a spare visual language in which the figures are paraphrased for emotive effect and the colours reduced to harsh contrasts of black, white and grey. In his need to comprehend horror, Picasso succeeded in that most difficult of tasks: finding a proper expression for suffering.