The Dream and Lie of Franco (Plate I)

This set of etchings (see also 1948.48.2) satirizes the murderous rule of General Francisco Franco (1892–1975) with images of violence, showing its protagonist as a monstrous beast. The figure of a weeping woman is visible in the middle-left quadrant of the sheet at right. Each of the 18 vignettes was reproduced on separate postcards, whose sale was intended to raise funds to support Spain’s anti-Fascist government. Some of the images relate to Picasso’s mural Guernica, which depicted the horrors endured by the inhabitants of a small Spanish town that was bombed by Franco’s Fascist forces in 1937.