Guernica

Today I am going to write about one of the most representative paintings of the Cubist movement. The piece I am referring to is Guernica, created by the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. Its composition is mostly dark, dynamic and non-realistic. This painting represents the horrors of war and the deep impact and sorrow the people from Guernica felt when bombed.
My feelings towards Guernica are a complex mix of anguish and astonishment. It is really depressing that, for this painting to exist, there had to be such an horrendous event. Nevertheless, I feel pretty impressed by Picasso's capability to recreate the bombing. Every character in the artwork seems incredibly human and each one of them represents an unique feeling. For instance, the bull we see at the left is a symbol of Spain, the country where those events happened, and the woman right beneath it is the vivid image of a mother crying due to her child's loss.
To conclude, I would like to say that Picasso is one of my favourite artists and his ability to shape feelings seems amazing to me.

Practices from class

Some days ago we practiced the three ways of pre-writing that we could use when trying to write an essay. These three ways are:
1- Making a list
2- Freewriting
3- A visual map
I'm going to post my practices here. The topic I used to make them was "My country".

Making a list
-Spanish cuisine (discussion between South's cuisine defenders and North's cuisine defenders)
-Spanish education (is it a good educational system? What are its flaws?)
-Spanish politics (Catalonia's situation? Our government measures against Catalonian independence)
-Culture (bullfighting, is it culture or animal torture?)
-Spanish football teams (Spain as a team, is it better Real Madrid or F. C. Barcelona?)

Freewriting
Spain is a developed country. But is it really? Can we talk about development when our culture includes torture to bulls bull torture? Is it Spain so developed when our government's been accused multiple times of stealing public money? Today's situation of Spain may not be the most appropiate to talk about when talking about development, especially when half of our country is still stuck at something as easy as writing an essay. Another issue in our country is how deficient our education is. Most of the children don't learn how to write appropiately, not even when thay arrive at to highschool. However, not only education, culture and politics are twisted up, but also social questions, like gender inequality, poverty or home loss.

Visual map

Bertrand Russell

Hello there!

Some days ago our teacher showed us a text from Bertrand Russell. He wanted us to appreciate how beautiful the text was. The truth is it was really well-written, and I did like it, but who was Bertrand Russell? 

I was curious about that man, partly because I felt identified with his three passions (love, knowledge and pity), and I wanted to know him better. Although our teacher talked about him in general lines, I needed to know more. That's why I searched some more information about him.

Russel was a philosopher, mathematician, historian, writer, politic activist and Nobel laureate, along with many more careers. He was a pacifist and stood against imperialism, which is astounding, considering his aristocratic roots. However, his family was quite radical for their times: his parents were advocates of birth control and her maternal grandmother stood for women education. 

However, Russell's convictions become even more shocking when we travel back in time and discover that he lived through one of the darkest times of History: he was born in 1872, and died in 1970. That means he lived both First World War and Second World War, along with many more wars, such as Vietnam's War. How could a man stand for peace during those turbulent times? He was, in fact, imprisoned during World War I because of that pacifist way of thinking.

So, who was Bertrand Russell, after all? He was a multifaceted man, for sure, but his ideals took him further. He was a revolutionary, and his words will sound forever in the memory of History.

Presentation

Hello there, you fellow Internet user!

I'm Reibun, and I'm currently studying English Studies at the college. If you arrived here, it's probably because you're my English teacher or one of my classmates. Whatever it is, I welcome you to my blog, in which I'll upload weekly entries of what the teachers tell me to write about.

I do not have much left to tell you, so I hope your time here was worth it and we'll see each other in the next entry.

Have a nice day!