Guernica Trivia
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50 free Guernica trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Guernica trivia quiz covers both the painting and the town behind it. The easy questions ask who painted the great grey mural, which war it responds to, which museum holds it now, what colours it uses and which animals dominate the composition. From there it moves into the bombing itself: the German and Italian units that flattened a Basque market town on 26 April 1937, the journalist whose dispatch alerted the world, the general who blamed the victims and the code name the raid was given. The hard end is for people who know their Dora Maar from their Paul Éluard: the house paint Picasso had specially formulated, the vandal who sprayed 'KILL LIES ALL' across the canvas, the reason the UN's tapestry copy was hidden behind a blue curtain in 2003, the condition Picasso set before the painting could go to Spain, the German president who apologised to survivors and the dynasty of oak trees under which the laws of Biscay were sworn. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the painting, the bombing, the town of Gernika, the Tree of Gernika and the Condor Legion before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Pablo Picasso, Spanish Civil War and famous paintings quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Guernica, what is the woman at the far left edge holding in her arms?
A dead child
A dead child. Most of the town's men were away at the front, so the raid fell mainly on women and children, and they fill Picasso's canvas.
Q 02Guernica answers the 1937 bombing of a Basque town during which conflict?
The Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 with Franco's victory, so Picasso sent the canvas abroad and refused to let it hang in Spain while Franco ruled.
Q 03To which museum was Guernica moved in 1992?
Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid
Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, took it when Spain's twentieth-century art was gathered under one roof, a move that defied Picasso's own wish for where it should hang.
Q 04Guernica is painted in which palette?
Grey, black and white
Grey, black and white echo the press photographs that brought Picasso the news, giving the mural the immediacy of a newspaper picture.
Q 05Roughly how wide is Picasso's mural Guernica?
7.8 metres
About 7.8 metres wide and 3.5 tall, it was made for Spain's pavilion, which Picasso had visited to see the space his mural was to fill.
Q 06Which animal fills the upper left corner of Guernica, its tail rising like a plume of smoke?
A bull
A bull. Asked what it stood for, Picasso would only say 'this bull is a bull', leaving viewers to argue whether it is Spain, Franco or the artist himself.
Q 07Guernica was bombed on a Monday, traditionally the town's day for what?
A farmers' market
A farmers' market usually drew people in from the surrounding hills to the main square; whether that Monday's market had been called off because of the war is still debated.
Q 08The German air unit that carried out the raid on Guernica was known by what name?
Condor Legion
Condor Legion crews used Spain as a testing ground, trying out over its towns the bombing tactics Germany turned on the rest of Europe a few years later.
Q 09Guernica is often traced back to The Third of May 1808, a firing-squad scene by which Spanish painter?
Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya's firing squad stayed with Picasso: in 1951 he restaged the scene as Massacre in Korea, with gunmen in armour taking aim at a huddle of unarmed women.
Q 10The German officer who chose Guernica as a target was a younger cousin of which WWI figure?
The Red Baron
The Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, was shot down in 1918 while chasing a pilot who had just fired on his cousin Wolfram, then flying his first combat mission.
Q 11German bombers did not attack Guernica alone, so aircraft from which other country joined the raid?
Italy
Italy sent its Aviazione Legionaria, and the French paper Picasso read led with 'a thousand incendiary bombs dropped by the planes of Hitler and Mussolini'.
Q 12George Steer's dispatch from the ruins of Guernica ran in which London newspaper?
The Times
The Times ran it two days after the raid, and within the week Picasso had dropped his first idea for the mural and begun sketching Guernica.
Q 13Guernica was commissioned for the Spanish pavilion at a 1937 international exposition in which city?
Paris
Paris gave it mixed reviews; the mural only became an icon on the travels that followed.
Q 21Which stated target of the Guernica raid, on the edge of town, was left standing by the bombers?
A bridge
A bridge: the Germans said they were cutting off the retreat of government troops, yet no bomb hit it or the arms factory nearby while the centre of town burned.
Q 22When a German officer saw a photo of Guernica and asked 'Did you do that?', what did Picasso reportedly reply?
'No, you did.'
'No, you did.' The officer is said to have seen only a photograph: the mural itself had crossed the Atlantic in 1939 and spent the war in America.
Q 23Which poet's 'The Victory of Guernica' accompanied the painting in the 1937 Spanish pavilion?
Paul Éluard
Q 14Why was Guernica's 'return' to Spain after Franco's death not really a return?
It had never been in Spain
It had never been in Spain: painted in France and sent straight out on tour, Guernica first touched Spanish soil only six years after Franco died.
Q 15Which photographer and Picasso companion found the studio for Guernica and documented its creation?
Dora Maar
Dora Maar knew the building from anti-fascist meetings she had attended there, and once Picasso moved in she photographed the mural at every stage.
Q 16What did Picasso have specially formulated for Guernica instead of ordinary artists' colours?
Matte house paint
Matte house paint, mixed to his order with the least possible gloss, covered a canvas so large that Picasso painted parts of it from a ladder.
Q 17From his first sketch on 1 May 1937, roughly how long did Picasso take to finish Guernica?
5 weeks
About 5 weeks: he finished on 4 June, and unusually for him let invited artists such as Alberto Giacometti watch the mural take shape.
Q 18In Guernica, what small sign of hope did Picasso put beside the broken sword in the dead soldier's hand?
A flower
A flower. Picasso refused to paint a hero: the soldier lies in pieces, his sword shattered and his open palm scored like the stigmata of a martyr.
Q 19What blazes over the head of the suffering horse in Guernica, shaped like an all-seeing eye?
A bare light bulb
A bare light bulb is the scene's only piece of twentieth-century technology, and Picasso added it at the last moment, as the mural neared completion.
Q 20In Guernica, the horse's nostrils and upper teeth form a 'hidden' image of what?
A human skull
A human skull. Picasso first drew the horse with its head bowed to the ground, then raised it in mid-May into the screaming, death's-head centrepiece.
Paul Éluard and Picasso were inseparable in those years, and the actress María Casares recites his Guernica poem in a 1950 short film about the painting.
Q 24Which notorious deal was signed on 30 September 1938, the day Guernica arrived in London for exhibition?
The Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement was signed as the mural landed in Britain, sent on tour by Spain's elected government to raise funds and support for its war against Franco.
Q 25For most of the period from 1939 to 1981, Guernica was kept for safekeeping at which institution?
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York, was meant as a refuge from the war in Europe, and Picasso later extended the loan until Spain was a democracy again.
Q 26In 1974 Tony Shafrazi sprayed 'KILL LIES ALL' across Guernica in a protest linked to which war?
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War: he was protesting over the My Lai massacre case, and because the canvas was heavily varnished, the red paint wiped off with ease.
Q 27Guernica reached Spain in 1981 just before which Picasso anniversary?
His birth
His birth, a hundred years before: Picasso was born on 25 October 1881, and he died in 1973 without ever seeing the mural hang in Spain.
Q 28Picasso first vowed that Guernica would be handed over to Spain only when what was restored?
The Republic
The Republic never came back: Franco was followed by a king and a democratic constitution, and only after years of negotiation did the mural cross the Atlantic.
Q 29A tapestry copy of Guernica hangs at the UN in New York at the entrance to which chamber?
The Security Council
The Security Council entrance is where diplomats stop to speak to the press, so the tapestry's screaming figures often end up on the news behind them.
Q 30In February 2003 the UN's Guernica tapestry was curtained off during press conferences about which impending war?
Iraq
Iraq: officials said TV crews wanted a plainer backdrop, while diplomats blamed US pressure, since Colin Powell was arguing for invasion in front of an anti-war icon.