« African Guernica », fusain sur papier journal, 1967, par l’artiste plasticien et sculpteur sud-africain Dumile Feni (Zwelidumile Geelboi Mgxaji Mhlaba).

« Le bombardement par les nazis de la ville espagnole de Guernica en 1937 a inspiré à Pablo Picasso son tableau le plus célèbre, “Guernica”. Trente ans plus tard, Dumile Feni a créé “African Guernica”, sa propre réponse artistique à la violence, cette fois-ci perpétrée sous le régime de l’apartheid (...). »

« Tout comme le “Guernica” original (...), Feni utilise des métaphores et des symboles pour critiquer le régime de l’apartheid. L’apartheid ne se contentait pas de traiter les noirs et métis d’Afrique du Sud comme des personnes dotées de moins de droits, au même niveau que les animaux, mais il privait également tous les individus pris dans ce système de leur humanité. »

Surnommé le « Goya des townships », Feni vécu dans une extrême pauvreté en exil jusqu’à son décès en 1991. Il ne connu jamais la fin du régime de l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud.

⋅⋅⋅ https://www.goyaandafrica.org/feni-african-guernica
⋅⋅⋅ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumile_Feni
⋅⋅⋅ https://www.esmadrid.com/fr/agenda/lhistoire-ne...

#peinture #DumileFeni #apartheid #racisme #Guernica #AfriqueDuSud #Afrique

#OtD #Guernica

"Remembering the fascist destruction of Guernica

On this day in 1937, a Monday market morning in the Basque town of Guernica ended in fire and rubble.

Ten thousand people, locals, refugees, and peasants, had gathered in the town centre when, by late afternoon, the Nazi Condor Legion and Fascist Italian Legionary Air Force descended, dropping over 31 tonnes of munitions for more than three hours. The bombing reduced 85 per cent of the buildings to ruins.

They had joined the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Spanish army, led by General Franco, which had set out to overthrow the democratically-elected republic.

Any military justification was threadbare from the start. When the bombing ended, the Rentería Bridge, the town’s main strategic access route, remained untouched. This was terror as policy."

https://searchlightmagazine.com/2026/04/remembering-the-fascist-destruction-of-guernica/

on this day, 26 April 1937, the town of Gernika (Guernica) was aerially bombed by a coalition of Nazis, Spanish fascists, and Italian fascists, with somewhere between 150 to 1600 casualties – Picasso started his famous anti-war painting on 1 May and finished 4 June 1937

#antiwar #picasso #guernica #gernika

Today in Labor History April 26, 1937: The Nazis and Italian fascists bombed Guernica, a town in the Basque region of Spain, at the request of Spanish fascist leader, Francisco Franco. Later that year, Picasso painted his famous painting, Guernica, in protest of the atrocity. This was during the Spanish Civil War. The Republicans, a coalition of anarchist, socialist and communist partisans, were fighting the fascists, led by Franco. They bombed Guernica for two hours, killing between 1,000 and 3,000 civilians, or 20-60% of the population.

Some of the most unforgettable images from the Guernica painting include dismembered bodies, a weeping woman, and a dead baby, images that we’ve seen repeated so often in the current Israeli genocide on Palestine. In December 2023, not long after the Genocide in Gaza began, the people of Guernica, dressed in red, black, white and green, formed a human mosaic of the Palestinian flag incorporated into an image from Picasso’s Guernica, while sirens blared in the background. If you go to almost any town in the Basque Country today, you’ll see lots of Palestinian flags hanging from apartment windows, in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #fascism #antifascism #nazis #guernica #picasso #basque #spain #CivilWar #anarchism #socialism #communism #gaza #israel #genocide #freepalestine #euskadi