Guernica (Picasso) in political commitment and faulted it for not offering a vision of a better future. In contrast, Morgado's painting was a great success with Spanish Communists and with the public. The art critic Clement Greenberg was also critical of "Guernica", but for different reasons. In a later essay, Greenberg termed "Guernica" "jerky" and "too compressed for its size", and compared it unfavorably to the "magnificently lyrical" "The Charnel House" (1944–48), a later antiwar painting by Picasso. Among the painting's admirers were the art critic Jean Cassou and the poet José Bergamín, both of whom praised the painting as quintessentially Spanish.
Pablo Picasso by which time the artist had started to sign his work "Picasso"; before he had signed "Pablo Ruiz y Picasso". Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904), characterized by sombre paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colours, began either in Spain in early 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from the Blue Period, during which Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In his austere use of colour and sometimes doleful subject matter – prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects – Picasso