Manic Street Preachers

Manic Street Preachers are a rock band formed in 1986 in Blackwood, Wales and consisting of James Dean Bradfield (lead vocals, lead guitar), Nicky Wire (bass guitar, lyrics) and Sean Moore (drums, percussion). They are often colloquially known as "The Manics." After the release of their first single, "Suicide Alley", Richey Edwards joined the band as co-lyricist and rhythm guitarist. The band proclaimed their debut album Generation Terrorists would be the "greatest rock album ever" and hoped to sell sixteen million copies around the world, "from Bangkok to Senegal", after which they would split up. Despite the album's failure to meet this level of success, the band carried on with their career.

The group later became a trio when Edwards disappeared on 1 February 1995. Bradfield, Moore and Wire went on to gain critical and commercial success. The band have released twelve albums and three compilations, Forever Delayed, Lipstick Traces (A Secret History of Manic Street Preachers) and National Treasures – The Complete Singles. Their early combination of androgynous glam imagery, critical social lyrics about "culture, alienation, boredom and despair" and a furious rock sound gained them a loyal following over the years and assured them a cult status. The band's later albums retained a leftist politicisation and intellectual lyrical style while adopting a broader alternative rock sound. To date, they have sold more than 10 million albums worldwide.

Guernica

Guernica (Basque pronunciation: [ɡerˈnika]), official and Basque name Gernika, is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is united in one municipality with neighbouring Lumo, Gernika-Lumo. The population of the municipality is 16,224 as of 2009.

Gernika is best known to those residing outside the Basque region as the scene of the April 26, 1937, Bombing of Guernica, one of the first aerial bombings by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe. It inspired the painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

Location

This village is situated at 10m altitude, in the region of Busturialdea, in the valley of the Oka river. Its mouth is known to be Urdaibai's estuary's heart. Gernika makes border with the following townships:

History

Early history

The town of Guernica was founded by Count Tello on April 28, 1366, at the intersection of the road from Bermeo to Durango with the road from Bilbao to Elantxobe and Lekeitio. The strategic importance of the site was increased by the fact that it lay on a major river estuary, where vessels could dock at the port of Suso.

Guernica (disambiguation)

Guernica may refer to:

In art:

In music:

Guernica (Picasso)

Guernica is a mural-sized oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso completed by June 1937. The painting, which uses a palette of gray, black, and white, is known as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history. Standing at 3.49 metres (11 ft 5 in) tall and 7.76 metres (25 ft 6 in) wide, the large mural shows the suffering of people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence and chaos.

The painting is believed to be a response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed, and believed to have helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War.

Commission

In January 1937, the Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. At the time, Picasso was living in Paris, where he had been named Honorary Director-in-Exile of the Prado Museum. He had last visited Spain in 1934 and never returned. However, it was only on May 1, having read George Steer's eyewitness account of the bombing of Guernica (originally published in both The Times and The New York Times on April 28), that he abandoned his initial project and started sketching a series of preliminary drawings for Guernica, and which he would finish in early June 1937.