110 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Just opposite El Guernica was another work commissioned for the
pavilion: a constructivist sculpture by Alexander Calder entitled Mercury
Fountain. In employing the medium of mercury, Calder was alluding
to the ongoing siege at Almadén by General Franco’s forces, Almadén
being the site of a large mercury mine. Mercury was the currency in
which the Germans were to be paid for their assistance in destroying the
Spanish Republic: the Reich wanted mercury for the purpose of feeding
its swelling war-machine.^90 Also compelling public interest in the Spanish
Pavilion, was a huge mural in the building’s stairwell painted by Joan
Miró which was formally entitled the Catalan Peasant in Revolt but
which became unofficially known as The Reaper. James Thrall Soby, who
viewed the painting in situ, later wrote that no-one who saw this mural,
with its ‘ferocious and tormented central figure of a reaper with a sickle,’
could have forgotten its ‘strong and poignant efficacy as a symbol of
oppression’.^91
Volker Barth observes that despite the fact that the Italian aggression
in Ethiopia, the war in Spain and the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war
had already announced ‘the catastrophe to come,’ the French hosts of
the international exposition sought to ‘paint a picture of a world in har-
mony’.^92 Chapsal, underscored this in a speech inaugurating the exposi-
tion in which he stated the following:
France’s decision to hold this major event in insecure and difficult times
demonstrates faith in its fate and the future of peace. And by taking up
the invitation, the peoples of the world have demonstrated their solidarity
with this faith and that they also intend to direct their efforts to the samea few days he was transferring them on a white canvas, measuring 3.5 by 7.5 meters....In
early June 1937, only four weeks after it had been begun, the painting was transported to
the Spanish pavilion of the expo. Picasso himself offered his drawings and sketches for sale
in the pavilion: postcards of the work were also available.’ Winter, Dreams of Peace and
Freedom, 83.
(^90) Schulz-Hoffmann, ‘Max Beckmann and German Modernism,’ The Mad Square
Symposium: Art and Culture in Weimar Germany. Notes on symposium lecture in posses-
sion of author.
(^91) On The Reaper, see James Thrall Soby, Joan Miró (New York: Metropolitan Museum
of Modern Art, 1959), 88, 91.
(^92) Volker Barth, ‘Paris 1937: Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans
la vie moderne,’ in Challet-Bailhache, ed., Paris et ses expositions universelles: architecture
1855 – 1937 , 71.