Goya, Picasso, Miro: The Art History of Spanish Human Rights

Abstract

It wasn't until 1978 that Spain's constitution was written to guarantee equal human rights to all Spanish citizens. Like most countries, Spain still needs help finding its path through this complicated system. However, things were much worse, and Spanish citizens had to figure out their own means to protect themselves without relying on their political leaders. In this review paper, I discuss how three artists, Pablo Picasso, Francis Goya, and Joan Miro, contributed to human rights, not exclusively in Spain but worldwide. I will show how each artist, although in very different ways, led their country through these struggles. I will discuss topics such as how Picasso's Guernica was able to expose the horrors of war, how Goya's The Disasters of War used etched plates to denounce the tragedies of war and famine and the consequential political repression, and how Miro saw an artist as someone, in his own words, "to be someone, who amidst the silence of others, uses his voice to say something and who has the obligation that this thing not be useless but something that is of service to mankind."