'' Massacre in Korea '' is an expressionistic painting completed on January 18 , 1951 , by Pablo Picasso ; it criticizes United States intervention in the Korean War . It may depict an event similar to the No Gun Ri Massacre in July 1950 , when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by U.S. forces , or the Sinchon Massacre of the same year , an alleged mass killing carried out in the county of Sinchon , South Hwanghae Province , North Korea . '' Massacre in Korea '' depicts civilians being killed by anti-communist forces . The art critic Kirsten Hoving Keen says that it is " inspired by reports of American atrocities " and considers it one of Picasso 's communist works . Picasso 's work is influenced by Francisco Goya 's painting '' The Third of May 1808 '' , which shows Napoleon 's soldiers executing Spanish civilians under the orders of Joachim Murat . It stands in the same iconographic tradition of an earlier work modeled after Goya : Édouard Manet 's series of five paintings depicting the execution of Emperor Maximilian , completed between 1867 and 1869
Sinchon Massacre
Sinchon Massacre
Massacre in Korea