Guernica

In stark black, white, and grey a screaming horse, a bull, a woman clutching her dead child, a fallen warrior, and a figure ablaze writhe under a stark light bulb, all crowded into a vast frieze of agony. Picasso painted Guernica in furious response to the bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War, and refused to let it return to Spain until democracy was restored. Now in the Reina Sofia in Madrid, it is the supreme anti-war painting of the twentieth century - suffering and outrage rendered monumental and timeless.