In 1937 Pablo Picasso designed this work, in two parts, to express his outrage against the senselessness and horror of war. The individual images were intended be mass produced as postcards, and were later published in the Parisian journal Cahiers d’Art along with poetry by the artist voicing his grief over Guernica, the Basque town bombed by the Nazis in the same year.
Printed left to right, the etchings read right to left and form a narrative scene. The works satirize the Fascist General Francisco Franco, here depicted as a mad, mythical, and monstrous figure, at times in combat with a bull, representing Spain. Some images describe the aftermath of a battle, others are instead directly related to studies for the painting Guernica (1937).