Pablo Picasso speaks:

Through design and color, I have tried to penetrate
deeper into a knowledge of the world and of men, so that this
knowledge might free us. In my own way I have always said what
I considered most true, most just and best, and therefore most
beautiful.

But during the oppression and insurrection I felt that
that was not enough, that I had to fight not only with painting,
but with my whole being. Previously, out of the sort of
"innocence", I had not understood this.

My joining the Communist Party is a logical step in my
life, my work, and gives them their meaning.

I have become a communist because one party strives more
than any other to know and to build the world, to make men
clearer thinkers, more free and more happy. I have become a
communist because the communists are the bravest in France, in
the Soviet Union, as they are in my own country, Spain.

I have never felt more free, more complete, than since I
joined. While I wait for the time when Spain can take me back
again, the French Communist Party is a fatherland for me. In it
I find again all my friends, and so many of the beautiful faces
of the insurgents of Paris.

I am again among my brothers.

Paris.
Christmas, 1944.