Picasso, Sketches for "Guerinca."

Peace and war are frequent themes in music and the visual arts. Paintings such as Picasso's "guernica" and Rubens' "Allegory of the Outbreak of War" beg more than viewing and appreciation; they demand interpretation and analysis.  Below you will find links to several paintings.  The first has already been intrepreted.  The last few have not.  Please refer to the first  interpreted painting and learn something of interpretation, then move on to the others to try your hand at interpretation.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Return from War: Mars Disarmed by Venus, Getty Museum

Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Oil on canvas, Reina Sofia, Madrid
Rubens, Allegory of the Outbreak of War, 1638, Oil on canvas, Pitti Gallery, Florence
Rubens, War and Peace, 1629-30, Oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
Ikeda, Seeking Water at the River, in A Record of the Atomic Bomb, Hiroshima

As a further exercise, consider this:  Why might Picasso have decided not to use the following images (also to the left) in the final version of "Guernica" (link above)?
Picasso, Sketches for Guernica, Pencil, Reina Sofia, Madrid