“Picasso’s Guernica – whose complex sources and combative afterlife are examined in van Hensbergen’s brilliant study – began as a topical response to the first manifestation of total war, which indiscriminately rained down death on civilians.  But it has become the twentieth century’s graphic self-castigation: a religious painting (which is why van Hensbergen rightly calls it an icon) for a godless, iconoclastic age.”   Peter Conrad,  The Observer



“ A book that sparkles with intelligence.”  San Francisco Chronicle



"'Intriguing ....as a guide to iconography van Hensbergen is expert." Financial Times



“A towering biography of one of modernism’s great paintings.” Sunday Herald

 

“Elegantly and passionately, van Hensbergen recreates the story of Picasso and his denunciation of war through a series of kaleidoscopically overlapping contexts.” 
Paul Preston, author of Franco: A Biography, A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War and Juan Carlos: King of Spain.