PABLO PICASSO

(1881-1973)

Sueño y Mentira de Franco, 1937

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, Spain.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Literature
Georges Bloch, Catalogue de l'oeuvre gravé et lithographié, Volume I, 1904-1967, Berne, 1968 (Bl.297-298).
Geiser & Baer, Picasso Peintre-graveur, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre gravé, Volume III, 1935-1945, Berne, 1986 (B.615-616).
Patrick Cramer, Pablo Picasso: The Illustrated Books Catalogue Raisonné, Geneva, 1983 (CR.28).

Dream and Lie of Franco(1937) was created by Picasso in response
to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 following General
Franco's coup d'état to the Spanish second Republic.

In this set of satirical vignettes-line scenes Picasso not only condemns
the unlawfulness of Franco's regime, but ridicules the leader of the
fascist regime and exposes him as a grotesque murderer, as well as
condemning the suffering inflicted to the Spanish people.

In the tradition of medieval chivalric literature, the nice scenes of the first
plate narrate the heroic deeds and the piety of Franco as a knight except
he is represented as a tightrope walker with a giant penis, praying at an
altar of money, dragged-up as a Spanish Maja or riding a pig.

The scenes of the second plate, however, are devoted to the violence of
Franco's regime and the consequences of war in the Spanish people, in
particular the women. One can see the influence of his much-admired
Francisco de Goya and his Disasters of War, in these tragic and moving
compositions. Furthermore, it is here that we see for the first time the
figure of the 'crying woman' and other imagery such us 'Mother with
Dead child' that Picasso would develop on a monumental scale, in the
mural Guernica commissioned by the Spanish Republic for its pavilion
at the Paris World Fair in 1937.

The comic-strip character of these etchings derived from Picasso's
original ideal of producing a series of postcards to be sold separately in
order to raise money in support for the Republican cause.