My top 10 pieces of art: 1

Guernica - Pablo Picasso (1937)

I thought long and hard about this, but I think this was a worthy piece of artwork for my top spot.
I'm not normally into Pablo Picasso; I do enjoy his Cubism work and his "Blue Period", but otherwise I find him to be slightly over-rated in my opinion. Not that I'm calling him a bad artist by any means, I just have different taste to the masses I guess!

However, there is one Picasso painting that I consider to be my all-time favourite; Guernica was painted during the Spanish civil war in the late 1930's, and it captures the emotional trauma the war brings.
Closer inspection of the figures shows ghostly figures of humans with gruesome features and frightened frozen faces, but because these humans are killed along with animals, Picasso proves that it's not only humans who suffer, but all form of life do - such is the brutality of war that the innocent often gets punished. There is plenty of symbolism in this artwork - something I often look to find in art - the monochrome colour suggests a bleak outlook and a stark reminded of what impact war really has on life. Another point on the importance of animals in the piece is that they are shown to be deformed and showing the same emotions as humans suffer, and the whole painting just shows chaos and pain at its worst.

I think the scale of the piece should also be taken into consideration - it's massive, and that shows the scale of the devastation, and it's quite impossible for the viewer to detach themselves from the piece. I'd like to see it for myself one of these days.