Star Wars Guernica

Contemporary American artist Ron English merges brand imagery, motifs from popular culture, cartoon characters and art historical references in a unique style which he has coined ‘Popaganda’. Having previously riffed on works by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Leonardo da Vinci, he has recently reframed Picasso’s most famous masterpiece, ‘Guernica’.

Where Picasso’s mural is a powerful piece of propaganda, Ron English has painted witty, ‘popaganda’-styled interpretations of ‘Guernica’ which carry his own statements about today’s culture and divided societies as we advance towards new technologies. Inserting his own irreverent imagery, characters and visual references into Picasso’s template, English’ highly-imaginative phantasmagorical tableaux assume iconic status, while asserting the artist’s own position as a great contemporary master.

‘Star Wars Guernica’ is the grand culmination of English’s playful ‘Popaganda’ style, in which he blends references to popular culture with famous characters and art historical imagery. Meanwhile, the characters stand on a red carpet of English’s imagining, adding a cinematic quality to the painting, as if in reverence to the source material on screen. It is the recognisable cast from George Lucas’ epic space story who appear in his frame: Darth Vader, R2-D2 and Yoda are caught in dramatic battle, echoing Picasso’s action-packed composition. Simultaneously evoking the sprawling special effects of the films, English has created a detailed tableau in which rebel forces between good and evil battle for domination. Having taken on one of the best-loved film franchises of all time, and merged it with Picasso’s great masterpiece, English has found the freedom to visualise “Something that is a cultural phenomenon” through his own highly imaginative lens, elevating it to icon status. In his absorbing Star Wars-themed artwork Ron English has captured “the whole film in one shot.”

Having taken “the melody” of Picasso’s epic mural as his starting point, the American artist has reimagined it through his own ‘Popaganda’ lens, merging art historical references with vivid imagery from one of the most popular cultural franchises of all time.

Drawing on his photography background, English built a complete set of Star Wars characters and spaceships, which he lit dramatically before painting this theatrical composition in a meticulous manner. In contrast to his earlier colourful works, he has developed a striking palette of grey, black and white “in relationship to Picasso's original”, while deliberately keeping the Spanish artist’s imagery of the enigmatic bull and eye-shaped light in the background.

It was in 1937 that Picasso painted ‘Guernica’ as a powerful piece of propaganda, protesting the horrific bombing of the Basque town by Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. Having seen Picasso’s epic, anti-war mural in person and taking this art historical icon as his template, English decided that he wanted to do “100 versions of it in every way that I could think of.”. English has self-consciously kept some of the most symbolic imagery from Picasso’s mural, paying tribute to his predecessor. With the adaptations, he has paid tribute to the billboard-like scale and composition of the original, resonating deeply with his own earlier work. Having started his career as a street artist in the late 1970s, English hijacked billboards across America, radically altering big brands’ original messaging by inserting new text, images and cartoon characters in a provocative and early form of ‘culture jamming’. 

This Mixed Media Limited-Edition on Canvas hand-signed by Ron English and can be purchased in a set of two.

Find out more about this collection here or alternatively shop more Ron English artwork here.