1937

Dream and Lie of Franco - Sueño y Mentira de Franco (Plate 1)

Spanish, 1881 - 1973

Picasso made this print, one of a pair, in support of the Spanish Refugee Relief Campaign, intending the set of nine images to be cut up and sold as individual postcards, or as a folio edition containing both etchings and a related poem by the artist. Seen with its pair, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1953-64-27b, the eighteen serial images that compose these etchings represent a searing attack on General Francisco Franco and his pillaging fascist troops, whose armed insurrection against the democratically elected Popular Front government led to the Spanish Civil War. Drawing upon Spanish pictorial traditions of religious and military processions, Picasso depicts Franco as a traitor to Spanish tradition and a destroyer of its culture and people.