Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica” (1937) uses a palette of black, grey, and white to depict the violence resulting from the bombing of Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Looking at this painting, one can discern people dead or dying, along with expressions of horror and multiple sources of light. This was painted during Picasso’s surrealist period, in which the compositions of his painting become increasingly dream-like and he begins to incorporate social issues of the time into his artwork. At first glance, it is hard to understand what is going on in “Guernica.” Every part of the canvas has something going on; floating faces, wailing people, cows, horses, and limbs strewn about. Even though it is hard to fit these pieces of suffering together, I can understand the pain and anguish Picasso is trying to express using this method of painting. The chaotic composition stays true to how the actual bombings affected people in Spain, and I think the painting does a very good job of showing the pain people endured and allowing the viewer to sympathize with this horrifying event. I think the palette Picasso used also makes the suffering in the painting clear, as these colors distinctly stand out and contrast with each other invoking a sense of turmoil and loss. The colors also differ greatly from impressionism, which concentrated mainly on using multiple bright colors to convey a certain mood. Picasso also creates a mood with his colors, but these colors are much more concentrated and less care-free than those of impressionism. Moreover, while Impressionist art tries to capture a single moment almost like a photograph, Picasso captures multiple moments and scenes of death and destruction and piles them into one huge canvas, so the jagged angles and piles on bodies each hold their own stories and points of view like those who died in Guernica. I find this painting to be greatly upsetting, which means that Picasso did his job well in trying to incite social change, and I think “Guernica” captures the powerful images you can express in art using any style, because by invoking a particular mood one can create an art piece that transcends style and affect people beyond the realm of art.