Pablo Picasso
Spain, 1881-1973 Sueño y Mentira de Franco (The dream and lie of Franco), 1937
Etchings and letterpress
Museum purchase: Letha Churchill Walker Memorial Art Fund. 2001.0078.01-4
After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 Pablo Picasso responded with a rare outburst of political imagery. In November 1936, Picasso began work on a portfolio of etchings, Sueño y Mentira de Franco (The dream and lie of Franco), directed at General Francisco Franco, leader of the nazi-backed nationalist forces. The portfolio consists of a poem by the artist and eighteen etched images printed on two large sheets of paper. Picasso had intended that the small images be cut into postcards to be sold at the Spanish Pavilion during the 1937 World's Fair in Paris in support of the fight against Franco.
The grotesque images of Franco in this print series clearly derive from the spiral-bellied Ubu Roi (King Ubu), Alfred Jarry's famous personification of ignorance and brutality. The ideas developed in Sueño y Mentira de Franco were further developed in Picasso's mural, Guernica (also planned for the 1937 World's Fair), which takes its title from the Basque town that was targeted by nazi bombers in April, 1937, resulting in a huge loss of civilian life.
