Antonio Banderas has signed up to play Pablo Picasso in Carlos Saura's 33 Dias, a drama about the creation of the painter's great anti-war masterpiece Guernica, according to Variety.

Guernica, a black and white mural that Picasso completed in 1937, was painted in response to the bombing of the Basque town by German and Italian forces supporting the nationalists during the Spanish civil war. It's unveiling at the World's Fair in Paris in the same year helped to bring attention to the conflict. The tally of civilian deaths as a result of the bombings is still disputed. The Basque government reported 1,654 dead after the attack, but modern estimates put the number between 300-400.

"Picasso's a character that has pursued me for a long time and I always rejected," Banderas told El País. "He deserves a lot of respect because I am from Malaga, and I was born four blocks from where he was born". Banderas, 51, is of a similar age to that of the artist (54) when he finished the painting.

Guernica shows Spanish symbols (and Picasso motifs) – the horse and the bull – being torn apart by conflict. On the bottom left-hand corner a woman grieves over a dead child. To the right a man is consumed by a burning building. But Picasso himself remained tight-lipped about the symbolism of the piece. "This bull is a bull and this horse is a horse," he once said. "If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning".