At last – a serious exhibition that seeks to put the politics back into Picasso, one of the most influential and inventive artists of the 20th century. In 1944, Picasso astonished the art world by joining the French Communist Party, remaining a member until his death in 1973, actively supporting left-wing causes with gifts of prints and funds. Picasso: Peace + Freedom looks at his political involvement shedding new insights into the artist’s life as a tireless political activist and campaigner for peace, challenging the widely-held view of Picasso as a playboy and compulsive extrovert. The vehemence in his opposition to fascism led him to paint such powerful images as the bombing and destruction of Guernica and he resolutely refused to go back to Spain while Franco was in charge.
Having witnessed the way communists in France led and supported the resistance, as a member of the Communist Party, he became a figurehead of left-wing causes, a period when the political content of his work came to the fore. His paintings frequently reference and comment upon key historical moments, chronicling human conflict and war, but also a desire for peace. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Picasso: Peace + Freedom is a timely look at his work in the Cold War era and how he transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of East and West.
On hundred and fifty key paintings and drawings related to war and peace from 1944-1973 look at the way Picasso responded to the horror of war, such as in his masterpiece, The Charnel House (1944-45), his most overtly political painting since Guernica in 1937, based on a Spanish Republican family who were killed in their own kitchen. Also on show are other explicitly political work such as Monument to the Spaniards who Died for France and The Rape of the Sabines (1962), painted at the height of the Cuban missile crisis and on the verge of a possible third world war.
In contrast to images on the horror of war, the artist’s Dove of Peace image was joyful and exuberant, becoming the unofficial emblem for the peace movement and a universal symbol of hope during the Cold War. Picasso’s lithograph of the fan-tailed pigeon, the bird given to him by Matisse in 1948, was featured on the poster of the First International Peace Congress held in Paris in 1949. The image of the dove also had a highly personal significance for Picasso going back to childhood memories of his father painting doves kept in the family home. In 1949, Picasso named his daughter Paloma – Spanish for “dove”. Picasso later provided variations on the dove for the peace congresses in Wroclaw, Stockholm, Sheffield, Vienna, Rome and Moscow.
Controversially, for the Sheffield peace conference the then Labour Government refused to admit many of the high profile speakers, including Paul Robeson, into the country and in disgust Picasso refused to attend the opening of an Arts Council exhibition of his work and sequentially never returned to Britain.
While Picasso’s art cannot only be seen only through his political commitment, his broad humanitarian concerns are evident throughout much of his work, with powerful emotions ranging from anguished images of death and destruction to colourful and enjoyable images of doves and pigeons that still lift and inspire. Picasso: Peace + Freedom offers an alternative and thoughtful perspective, which, in questioning the accepted conventional view, opens up
further layers of understanding of Picasso’s art.
