Massacre in Korea (1951) is the third anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso. It portrays the massacre of women and children by a firing squad.
Massacre in Korea depicts another wartime tragedy—the No Gun Ri Massacre. On July, 1950, an estimated 250 to 300 South Korean civilians—mostly women and children—were killed by the American 7th Cavalry Regiment in the village of Nogeun-ri, 100 miles southeast of Seoul.
The soldiers were given the order to open fire at the refugees due to reports that North Korean soldiers had infiltrated the group.
The U.S. Army did not acknowledge any of the survivor’s testimony until 2001 when they conducted their own investigation and concluded that it was “an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing.”
Picasso’s first anti-war painting is one of his most famous and well-known work, Guernica (1937), which depicts the bombing of the small town of the same name in northern Spain by the Nazis and Facist Italy on behalf of Francisco Franco and the Spanish Nationalists.
When Guerica was exhibited at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, an SS Officer is said to have approached Picasso and asked, “Did you do this?” to which Picasso replied, “No, you did.”
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Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.