Picasso and Carlos de Oliveira

an Ekphrastic Reading of Guernica

Abstract

This interdisciplinary article analyzes some points of Guernica by Pablo Picasso and shows how the poet Carlos de Oliveira re-reads this painting, using the rhetorical figure of ekphrasis, which implies the translation of non-verbal signs by verbal ones. The Portuguese writer interprets the technique of the Spanish painter, using a technique similar to that of Cubism, making cuts in the famous painting, observing grouping by grouping, to comment on them in each poem.