Movement for a Socialist Future E-mail to hear about site changes, placing 'update' in body of message Picasso as political icon Picasso - the Communist years. Gertje Utley, Yale University Press, £35. Pablo Picasso, arguably the greatest artist of the 20th century, in his art stood for everything that Communist Parties were accustomed to denouncing. Stalin and his henchman Zhdanov, imposed the doctrine of Socialist Realism in the early 1930s as the only acceptable style in the visual arts. Picassoï¿½s great adventure with George Braque in the years before World War I, however, produced an anti-naturalist style ï¿½ Cubism. Together they sparked off an artistic movement which revolutionised the visual arts for the coming centuries. A virtuoso in all styles of drawing, painting and sculpture, a master of Surrealism and other styles, Picasso developed Cubist principles of space and form throughout his artistic career. His political masterpiece, Guernica, painted to support the Spanish revolution is a heroic fusion of the Cubist dislocation of space with Surrealist imagery.

The French Communist Party (PCF) from the 1930s adhered to Zhdanovï¿½s dogma of Socialist Realism. It was clearly in opposition to the new styles developed by Picasso and others in the decades running up to World War II. Therefore, when Picasso joined the French Communist Party in October 1944, many people were surprised. Why did he join? And was his friend the poet Jean Cocteau right when he remarked that joining the PCF was the "first ever anti-revolutionary gesture by Picasso"? And, equally important, why did Picasso remain a loyal member until the end of his life, despite the sharp differences between him and the party that often surfaced? Gertje Utleyï¿½s book goes a long way to answering these questions. Picassoï¿½s commitment to communism is ignored in most of the innumerable writings about him. But in reality, his political beliefs were central to his very being. He took a strong stand against Fascism, militarism and war.

Before World War II, Picassoï¿½s sympathies, backed up with generous donations, lay with the revolutionary left (FAI and POUM) rather than the Republican government when it came under Stalinist control, even though he created Guernica at the request of the Spanish Republic. It was the decision to remain in Paris during the years of the German Occupation which drew Picasso closer into the circle of writers and artists which included Resistance fighters, Communist Party members and sympathisers. Utley draws together a wealth of information and personal recollections showing how Picassoï¿½s studio became a haven for anti-fascists, "where even members of the underground felt safe". At the same time, staying in Paris separated Picasso from anti-Stalinist intellectuals, such as Surrealist leader André Breton, who could have provided a sympathetic communist alternative. Picassoï¿½s close friend, the poet Paul Eluard, re-joined the PCF in 1943 and many other French intellectuals followed. Picasso found in the PCF "a fatherland" where he could be among brothers and friends.

Eluard and a large group of artists and writers including Louis Aragon provided Picasso with a rationale which seemed to reconcile the anti-creative dogmas of Stalinism with his own modernist revolution in art. Utley shows how, even as Eluard and Aragon wrote eulogies to Stalin, and paid lip service to "Socialist Realism" they sought at the same time to make Picassoï¿½s art acceptable to the party. Picasso was reduced to tears in 1948 while attending the Stalinist Congrès Mondial des Intellectuals pour la Paix in Wroclaw, Poland where he was criticised for the "decadent and bourgeois manner of his art". Nonetheless he remained a party member, donating innumerable works, large sums of money and appearing at many PCF and international events. When Stalin died in 1953 a notorious scandal erupted over Picassoï¿½s drawing of Stalin, which Aragon commissioned for the front page of PCF cultural journal Les Lettres Francaises. Denunciations of the portrait poured in.

But an elaborate network of cynical operators, from PCF Secretary General Maurice Thorez downwards, kept Picasso on board, apologising for the dogmas and crimes of Stalinism to make them less obnoxious to the artist. Only a year later, the PCF was forced to acknowledge at least some of Stalinï¿½s crimes and apologise for its attack on Picasso. He showed he had their measure when he said "Donï¿½t you think that soon they will find that my portrait is too nice?" Picasso refused to condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary, but his painting Massacre in Korea was used by people in the streets of Warsaw to show their support for the victims of the tanks. This infuriated the PCF but secretly pleased Picasso. In private he deplored the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, but in public he remained silent. Picasso needed the party as an intellectual home and as a way of reaching the masses. The PCF needed him as a popular figurehead and status symbol more than he needed them. This gave him a measure of independence denied to others. Cocteau was right when he warned that there was a reactionary aspect to Picassoï¿½s relationship to the PCF.

His attempts to make his work acceptable to them tended to dull his creative edge and he could not repeat the powerful fusion of the symbolic and political which characterised Guernica. Picasso's politics | Art and design | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close "Art is never chaste," said Pablo Picasso . "Art is dangerous." Picasso was not much of a speech-maker, but he could surely turn a phrase. His characteristic mode of intervention was single-burst point-scoring. He was a riddler. "Braque and James Joyce," he told Gertrude Stein, "are the incomprehensibles that anybody can understand." He relished the flip, the quip, the bon mot; he delighted in making mischief. "It's well-hung," he said, of a rival's exhibition. He who invented so much did not invent self-fashioning, but he is the supreme exemplar of artistic self-fashioning in modern times. He was a consummate self-publicist. "You can't be a sorcerer all day long," he remarked knowingly to André Malraux. It was but a short step from shaman to showman. When it came to his art, he was serious as a pope.

Towards the end of the second world war, he was goaded by an interviewer on the relationship between art and politics. He interrupted the interview to hurl himself on a piece of paper and scribble a statement, a mini-manifesto, so that he would not be misunderstood. "What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes if he's a painter, ears if he's a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he's a poet – or even, if he's a boxer, only some muscles? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, passionate or pleasing events in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How is it possible to be uninterested in other men and by virtue of what cold nonchalance can you detach yourself from the life that they supply so copiously? No, painting is not made to decorate apartments.

It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy." That flash of grandiloquence might be taken as the text for the forthcoming exhibition at Tate Liverpool, Picasso: Peace and Freedom, which sets out to explore the artist as a political being, through the causes he espoused, and above all through his commitment to the French Communist party (PCF), which he joined in 1944, with great fanfare, and never left. Picasso always hoped to go on for ever, and he very nearly did. In the course of a long lifetime (1881-1973) he had seen it all, from the Spanish-American war of 1898 to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. He knew anarchists, bolshevists, socialists, communists, fascists, pacifists, falangists and Stalinists, to say nothing of cubists, futurists, dadaists, surrealists, suprematists, constructivists, destructivists and stridentists. He grew up with monarchism assailed by revolutionary anarchism; he grew old with republicanism served by monopoly capitalism. Ideologically, he had lived.

In the matter of the horrifying, he had form. Guernica (1937), then in the United States, was already a cause célèbre: "the Last Judgment of our age" or "Bolshevist art controlled by the hand of Moscow", it was gaining in iconic status with each passing decade. At the time of his outburst on the role of the artist, he was working on the most powerful political painting he ever made, The Charnel House (1944-45), the pièce de résistance of the Tate exhibition. Picasso himself said that the work was affected by revelations of the real-life charnel houses of the holocaust. In this instance there is no reason to doubt him. The pages of his newspaper, the Communist daily L'Humanité, were full of graphic accounts of the camps, complete with illustrations.

An article on the crematoria at Natzweiler-Struthof, near Strasbourg, included the macabre detail that the executioners had tied the hands and feet of their victims, like the central motif of the painting, and the heaped corpses in the death zone that constitutes the lower part of the canvas are reminiscent of the first shock photos of the camps – and of Goya's Disasters of War (1810-20), images at once unprintable and unforgettable. In the death zone, crucified innocence and clenched-fist defiance grapple with mass killing and dismemberment. The upper zone is less horrific, though no less eerie. Some elements of a contemporaneous still life enter in Pitcher, Candle and Casserole (1945) – the candle, symbol of hope, obliterated. The Charnel House is the offensive and defensive weapon deployed: memento mori, indictment, tribute to sacrifice, howl of despair, and proof positive of lyric poetry after Auschwitz. The depth of his political engagement remains controversial, however, not least because it is still relatively unexplored.

The Tate exhibition, master-minded by Lynda Morris, mounts a spirited defence of the artist as a principled political actor. As its title might suggest, Picasso: Peace and Freedom is almost an apologia. Inevitably, it raises more questions than it answers, but the questions themselves are important – what did Picasso stand for? – and in daring to place politics centre-stage (or centre-show) Morris and her collaborators challenge us once again to reappraise this protean and inexhaustible figure. What are we to make of Picasso politico? He was nothing if not individualistic, but in this respect he exemplifies a general tendency: with few exceptions, the intellectual lives of the artists have not yet been written. Their mistresses command more attention than their mental furniture. This may reflect a certain condescension. Painters in particular are often supposed to be either stupid or vapid, and in any event inarticulate, unable or unwilling to explain themselves; some painters connive at this deception.

As the anarchist and abstract expressionist Barnett Newman noted caustically: "The artist is approached not as an original thinker in his own medium but, rather, as an instinctive, intuitive executant, who, largely unaware of what he is doing, breaks through the mystery by the magic of his performance to 'express' truths the professionals think they can read better than he can himself." In fact, many painters are lucid expositors and vivid writers, though few are as vivid as Van Gogh. Art and thought (even political thought) are not incompatible after all. But the politics of the palette are seldom as simple as red, white and blue. "It is not necessary to paint a man with a gun," declared Picasso. "An apple can be just as revolutionary." As always, "Don Misterioso" is a hard case. His convictions are seldom spelt out; his intentions are frequently obscure. With Picasso, it was never one thing or the other. His meaning, like his motivation, was plural, inscrutable, unstable. "A green parrot is also a green salad ... He who makes it only a parrot diminishes its reality. A painter who copies a tree blinds himself to the real tree. I see things otherwise.

A palm tree can become a horse. Don Quixote can come into Las Meninas." With such a worldview, mapping belief is a tall order; and interpreting the painting is not likely to yield unambiguous conclusions. On canvas and in conversation, it is unwise to take him too literally. He could never remember whether he had said "I don't look, I find" or "I don't find, I look" – "not that it makes much difference ". Typically, the saying itself was appropriated or adapted from elsewhere – Picassified – in this case from Paul Valéry's Monsieur Teste. ("To find is nothing. The trick is to add to what you find.") As his friends and rivals well knew, he was a thievish genius. Pablo Picasso was a great finder. As a painter, he found objects. As a riddler, he found words. As a sorcerer, he found politics.

That is the lingering suspicion – a suspicion that in the end the politics were gesture politics, and not to be taken seriously; that the political beliefs were rather shallow; that communism itself was more or less meaningless to this heedless party member; that the peace-mongering was little more than political posturing; that the trademark dove and all the drawing and lithographing for the cause (well represented in the exhibition) was so much agitprop; that the saluting of Stalin and his henchmen, however idiosyncratic, was at best deluded; that this was at bottom a mercenary affair, whereby the world-renowned painter was exploited by the party for his famous name, his fleet brush, and his financial donations; in short, that Picasso was a useful idiot. The donations were certainly substantial. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that Picasso bankrolled the post-war French Communist party, and underwrote various causes associated with it. In 1949, for example, L'Humanité acknowledged his donation of one million francs for striking miners in the Pas de Calais. The party basked in the reflected glory, and pocketed the cash.

One of its cells felicitously took his name: Cellule Interentreprise du Parti Communiste Français Pablo Picasso. His value as figurehead was priceless, as Picasso: Peace and Freedom justly highlights, but it may well be that his greatest contribution was financial. Yet here, too, a note of caution is in order. The donation to the striking miners, touted in the exhibition catalogue as an example of Picasso's anarchist principles, was matched by a donation to Fernande Olivier, his former mistress, in return for an undertaking that she would publish no more "Intimate Memories" in his lifetime. Fernande was destitute. She was bought off. Picasso's principles were not much troubled. According to the catalogue, "it could be argued that Picasso belonged to the wider 19th-century socialist and anarchist traditions of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Tolstoy, John Ruskin, William Morris and the Independent Labour party of Keir Hardie." That does not seem very plausible. The only thing Picasso had in common with Tolstoy is a work called War and Peace (a tub-thumping mural of 1952, for which he is not remembered).

He knew more of hooliganism than anarchism. ("Picasso hooligan" was an epithet bandied around by his friends.) Moreover, one million francs, here or there, was not about to break the bank. Picasso was as rich as Croesus, and the means of production were safe in his hands. Picasso's "committed" period is said to date from 1944, when he joined the party. His own account is a characteristic piece of self-fashioning. "I came to communism without the slightest hesitation, since ultimately, I had always been with it ... Those years of dreadful oppression [the occupation] showed me that I had to fight not only through my art, but through my own person. I so wanted to return to my native land! I have always been an exile. Now I am one no longer; until Spain can at last welcome me back, the French Communist party opened its arms to me. I have found there all those whom I esteem the most, the greatest scientists, the greatest poets, and all those faces, so beautiful, of Parisians in arms which I saw during those days of August [1944, the liberation].

I am once more among my brothers." What he found, in this touching fable, was his spiritual home. Yet plighting his troth to the party may have worried him more than he allowed. (The photograph accompanying the announcement is a picture of unease.) Marcelle Braque was convinced that he did not want to take the plunge on his own. Picasso spent a week with the Braques trying to persuade his old comrade from the cubist revolution to come in with him, and make a joint declaration. That would have been still more of a sensation, but Braque remained unmoved, even when appealed to by Simone Signoret. He had as much feeling for the workers of the world as did Picasso. But Braque was not a joiner. Adherence to parties and causes was not for him; only oysters adhere, as he once said. In any case, done like this, it smacked of a publicity stunt. The loathsome occupiers were on the run at last. This was the time for painting, not pantomime. Picasso's announcement was disappointing, possibly, but not unexpected.

"It's hardly surprising that he should have joined the Communist party: it gives him a platform." The soap box was as unsuitable as the social whirl. "Picasso used to be a great painter," Braque observed. "Now he is merely a genius." Picasso adhered, oyster-like, to the end. He attended congresses of Intellectuals for Peace, and even made a speech (against the persecution of his friend the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda), but the conscience-wrenching dramas of the cold war seemed to pass him by. When Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and the Prague spring in 1968, he had nothing to say. In 1956 Czesław Miłosz wrote him an open letter. "No one knows what consequences a categorical protest from you might have had ... If your support helped the terror, your indignation would also have mattered." Later in 1968, he drafted and then cancelled a statement for an article in Look magazine that tolled the bell on the political being: "I no longer understand the politics of the left and I have no wish to talk about it.

I decided long ago that if I wanted to deal with such matters I should have to change profession and go into politics. But of course that is impossible." Picasso painted furiously for peace. As art, much of this work was unworthy of him. Picasso: Peace and Freedom proposes boldly to circumvent this flaw by co-opting The Women of Algiers (1955), Las Meninas (1957), the variations on Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1959-62) and The Rape of the Sabine Women (1962-63), and sundry mothers (for peace) and musketeers (for war), with ingenious suggestions of contemporary political comment. Thus Las Meninas becomes "an indictment of Franco's dictatorship and his royalist aspirations" or "a satirical comment on contemporary Spain, as cruel in its condemnation of the Spanish monarchy as Goya's caricatures". The exhibition is immeasurably enriched, but nagging questions persist. Picasso is perhaps best seen as a kind of political sleeper. His slavish devotions to the servile French communists notwithstanding, his true commitment was to the Cézannists.

"Even a casserole can scream!" he said of The Charnel House. "Everything can scream! A simple bottle! And Cézanne's apples!" In the final analysis, however, he was already spoken for. Pablo Picasso, a painter without peer, lived and died an egotist. A party of one was his ideal station. • Picasso: The Mediterranean Years opens on 4 June 2010 at Gagosian, Britannia Street, London WC1 (020 7841 9960). 8 Things You May Not Know About Picasso - History in the Headlines 8 Things You May Not Know About Picasso April 8, 2013 By Jesse Greenspan Picasso’s “'Femme assise pres d'une fenêtre.” Share this: 8 Things You May Not Know About Picasso Author 8 Things You May Not Know About Picasso URL Google Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973, having become arguably the most famous artist of the 20th century.

His productivity was unmatched, with tens of thousands of works to his name, including groundbreaking abstract paintings such as “Guernica.” To this day, he remains so popular that entire museums in Barcelona, Paris and elsewhere are devoted to his career, and his pieces can fetch over $100 million at auction. Below, explore eight facts about the prolific and influential artist. 1. Picasso was considered a child prodigy. Born in Málaga on the southern coast of Spain in 1881, Pablo Picasso could supposedly draw before he could talk. By age 13 he was said to have out-mastered his father, an art teacher. As a result, his father allegedly handed over his brushes and palette to Picasso and swore that he would never paint again. Soon after, Picasso sought admission to an art school in Barcelona. Although a month was normally allowed to complete the entrance examination, he finished his in a single day. Much later, he stated that he could draw “like Raphael” when he was young. “But it has taken me my whole life to learn to draw like a child,” he added. 2. Picasso constantly changed his painting style. As a teenager, Picasso painted fairly realistic portraits and landscapes.

He then went through his so-called blue and rose periods from 1901 to 1906, in which he depicted such things as poverty-stricken children and circus scenes, respectively. “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a distorted portrait of five prostitutes that is considered one of his most revolutionary pieces, came in 1907. It opened the door for Cubism, an abstract style that reduces subjects to geometric forms. By 1912 Picasso had invented collage by attaching oilcloth, newspaper clippings and other materials to the surface of his paintings. This, along with an increased emphasis on color, precipitated a transition from what’s known as Analytic Cubism to Synthetic Cubism. Later in life, he practiced a form of Neoclassicism and recreated paintings from such masters as Diego Velázquez, Édouard Manet and Eugène Delacroix. At various times, he also incorporated Surrealist, Expressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Symbolist elements into his art. 3. Picasso had help with the creation of Cubism.

Picasso ran in the same bohemian social circles as a slew of other artists and writers, including Henri Matisse, Gertrude Stein and Max Jacob. But his closest collaboration came with Georges Braque, with whom he co-founded Cubism around 1909 and whose paintings from the time appear remarkably similar to his own. The pair, who were influenced by such things as ancient Iberian sculpture, African masks and Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, regularly visited each other’s studios and exchanged ideas. In Braque’s words, it was rather “like two mountaineers roped together.” Their working relationship, which produced an increasingly abstract common technique, lasted until 1914, when Braque enlisted in the French army at the beginning of World War I. 4. Picasso was not just a painter. Though best known for his painting, Picasso experimented with a number of different mediums, including sculpture, ceramics, drawing and printmaking. From 1917 to 1924, he even designed the curtain, sets and costumes for a handful of ballets.

The earliest of those, “Parade,” featured a dancer who would become his first wife and the mother of his first child (his three other children were born out of wedlock). Picasso started writing poetry in 1935, and he also authored two plays in the 1940s. 5. Picasso actively opposed Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. The Spanish Civil War kicked off in July 1936 when military officers led by Francisco Franco revolted against the democratically elected Second Republic. Picasso, a Republican supporter, soon completed a series of anti-Franco etchings and made the first political statement of his life, saying the military caste was “plunging Spain into an ocean of misery and death.” Even more notably, he painted “Guernica” for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Inspired by an incident in which Nazi German planes flying for Franco bombed civilians in the town of Guernica, Picasso depicted a wounded horse, a decapitated soldier, a woman with a dead baby in her arms and other images of war.

The enormous painting, more than 25 feet in length, waited out most of the Franco years at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It finally returned to Spain in 1981 and now resides at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. 6. Picasso spent most of his life as an expat. In his youth, Picasso moved from Málaga to La Coruña to Barcelona to Madrid and then back to Barcelona again. He left Spain for the first time in 1900, taking an extended trip to Paris, and by 1904 he had settled permanently in the French capital. He would never live in Spain again, though he did return for a few visits prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Picasso even stayed in France during World War II, when the occupying Nazis barred him from showing his work. The artist later relocated to southern France, where he remained prolific until the very end of his life. 7. Picasso became a communist at age 62. Picasso joined the French Communist Party in 1944, right after Paris had been liberated from the Nazis.

“I have found there all whom I respect most, the greatest thinkers, the greatest poets and all the faces of the resistance fighters,” he explained at the time. The following decade, Picasso painted “Massacre in Korea,” which portrayed U.S. soldiers as futuristic knights about to attack pregnant women and children. He also sketched a drawing as part of a failed effort to save Greek communist leader Nikos Beloyannis from the firing squad, and he even did a portrait of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. But he did not always toe the party line. The French communists officially condemned his Stalin picture for being insufficiently revering, and in 1956 he signed a protest letter against the Soviet invasion of Hungary. 8. More Picasso paintings have been stolen than those of any other artist. As of last year, Picasso had 1,147 works listed as stolen, missing or disputed, more than twice as many as any other artist, according to the Art Loss Register. The most recent theft occurred in October, when robbers made off with a Picasso and six other paintings that were on exhibit at a Dutch museum.

A Picasso was likewise lifted from a Greek museum in January 2012, and in May 2010 a Picasso was among five paintings taken from the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. Tags Pablo Picasso Biography Biography Pablo Picasso Biography Picasso is not just a man and his work. Picasso is always a legend, indeed almost a myth. In the public view he has long since been the personification of genius in modern art. Picasso is an idol, one of those rare creatures who act as crucibles in which the diverse and often chaotic phenomena of culture are focussed, who seem to body forth the artistic life of their age in one person. The same thing happens in politics, science, sport. And it happens in art. Early life Born in Malaga, Spain, in October of 1881, he was the first child born in the family. His father worked as an artist, and was also a professor at the school of fine arts; he also worked as a curator for the museum in Malaga. Pablo Picasso studied under his father for one year, then went to the Academy of Arts for one year, prior to moving to Paris.

In 1901 he went to Paris, which he found as the ideal place to practice new styles, and experiment with a variety of art forms. It was during these initial visits, which he began his work in surrealism and cubism style, which he was the founder of, and created many distinct pieces which were influenced by these art forms. Updates in style During his stay in Paris, Pablo Picasso was constantly updating his style; he did work from the blue period, the rose period, African influenced style, to cubism, surrealism, and realism. Not only did he master these styles, he was a pioneer in each of these movements, and influenced the styles to follow throughout the 20th century, from the initial works he created. In addition to the styles he introduced to the art world, he also worked through the many different styles which appeared, while working in Paris. Not only did he continually improve his style, and the works he created, he is well known because of the fact that he had the ability to create in any style which was prominent during the time.

Russian ballet In 1917, Pablo Picasso joined the Russian Ballet, which toured in Rome; during this time he met Olga Khoklova, who was a ballerina; the couple eventually wed in 1918, upon returning to Paris. The couple eventually separated in 1935; Olga came from nobility, and an upper class lifestyle, while Pablo Picasso led a bohemian lifestyle, which conflicted. Although the couple separated, they remained officially married, until Olga's death, in 1954. In addition to works he created of Olga, many of his later pieces also took a centralized focus on his two other love interests, Marie Theresa Walter and Dora Maar. Pablo Picasso remarried Jacqueline Roque in 1961; the couple remained married until his death 12 years later, in 1973. Work as a pacifist Pablo Picasso was a pacifist, and large scale paintings he created, showcased this cry for peace, and change during the time. A 1937 piece he created, after the German bombing of Guernica, was one such influential piece of the time.

Not only did this become his most famous piece of art work, but the piece which showed the brutality of war, and death, also made him a prominent political figure of the time. To sell his work, and the message he believed in, art, politics, and eccentricity, were among his main selling points. Conflicting with social views Many things Pablo Picasso did during the 1950s, conflicted with the general public. Viciousness towards his children, exaggerated virility towards women, and joining the Communist party, were some of the many scandals which he was involved in during his lifetime. Although most of the things he did were viewed negatively by a minority of the general public, admirers of Pablo Picasso turned a blind eye, and still accepted him as a prominent figure in their society. Following the end of WWII, Pablo Picasso turned back towards his classic style of work, and he created the "Dove of Peace." Even though he became a member of the Communist party, and supported Stalin and his political views and rule, Pablo Picasso could do no wrong. In the eyes of his admirers and supporters, he was still a prominent figure, and one which they would follow, regardless of what wrongs he did.

He was not only an influence because of the works he created, but he was also an influential figure in the political realm. Influence outside of art Although Pablo Picasso is mainly known for his influence to the art world, he was an extremely prominent figure during his time, and to the 20th century in general. He spread his influences to the art world, but also to many aspects of the cultural realm of life as well. He played several roles in film, where he always portrayed himself; he also followed a bohemian lifestyle, and seemed to take liberties as he chose, even during the later stages of his life. He even died in style, while hosting a dinner party in his home. Collection of work Pablo Picasso is recognized as the world's most prolific painter. His career spanned over a 78 year period, in which he created: 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, and 34,000 illustrations which were used in books. He also produced 300 sculptures and ceramic pieces during this expansive career.

It is also estimated that over 350 pieces which he created during his career, have been stolen; this is a figure that is far higher than any other artist throughout history. Sale of his works Pablo Picasso has also sold more pieces, and his works have brought in higher profit margins, than any other artist of his time. His pieces rank among the most expensive art works to be created; with a price tag of $104 million, Garson a la Pipe, was sold in 2004. Although he had a conflicting lifestyle, Pablo Picasso was admired by many, and was one of the most influential figures of his time. Not only during his life, but also after his death, he is still one of the most well known artists, and political figures, of his time. With thousands of pieces to his name, and art works which have been seen by millions, around the world, he has been a great influence to society, he has influenced the art world, and he introduced many new styles of art, which helped shape modern art, and modern styles artists follow today.

MOST POPULAR PAINTINGS Biographical Sketch Françoise Gilot (1921- ) Françoise Gilot was born November 26, 1921 in the chic Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. An only child, she is the daughter of Emile Gilot, an agronomist, and Madeline Renoult. Attracted by art from a young age, and influenced by her mother who was herself an amateur artist, Françoise ultimately rebelled against practicing law--her father's chosen occupation for her. In 1943, at the age of twenty-one, Gilot had her first exhibition, despite the ban on modern art by the Nazi occupiers. It was during this same period that she met Pablo Picasso. Eventually, she would become his muse, mistress, and mother of two of his children in a tumultuous relationship that would last ten years.

Later, she summarized her feelings at the start of the liaison, "I knew that whatever came to pass--however wonderful or painful, or both mixed together--it would be tremendously important." She was to be the inspiration of many of Picasso's works, such as La Femme-Fleur , and he in turn singularly influenced her own artistic approach. After much hesitation, she finally broke off their relationship in 1953. In February 1961, with the collaboration of Carlton Lake, Gilot began to write Life with Picasso (1964). While Lake was considerably impressed with her recall of events, and even her memory for dialogue, which he verified against documents and his own interviews with Picasso, the reviews for the book when it came out in 1963 were ambivalent, if not overwhelmingly negative. Although, Gilot was unusually frank about her life with Picasso, she also did not spare herself in the process, which perhaps is one reason why biographers have continued to rely on her work--albeit reluctantly. While she dedicated the book "to Pablo," he tried to prohibit its publication, losing all three lawsuits to that purpose.

In 1962, Gilot divorced Luc Simon, whom she had married in 1955, and with whom she had a daughter. In 1970, she married Dr. Jonas Salk, the discoverer of the polio vaccine. They remained together until his death in 1995. Gilot's artistic style continued to evolve after she broke with Picasso. Later, she would attribute Matisse's use of color as being the greater influence upon her creative process. She also authored Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art (1990), among other works. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain. Son of the artist José Ruiz Blasco (1838-1913), Picasso went on to adopt his mother's maiden name, dropping Ruiz. Precociously gifted, at fourteen Picasso entered into the prestigious Escuela de Bellas Artes in Barcelona where his father was a teacher.

Around 1899, Picasso encountered his first important circle of artist and writer friends at the café Els Quatre Gats. Notably, his friendship with the poet and sculptor Jaime Sabartés, who later was to become his secretary, dates from this period. After his first exhibition in Barcelona, Picasso visited France for the first time, eventually settling there permanently in 1904. In Paris, Picasso moved into a studio in the now infamous Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre. The artists Juan Gris and Modigliani and the avant-garde writers Max Jacob, André Salmon, Pierre Reverdy, and Pierre MacOrlan also lived in the complex. His increasing circle of friends also included Guillaume Apollinaire, Gertrude and Leo Stein, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse. Artistically, Picasso's style was evolving from his somber Blue Period (1901-1904) to his Rose Period (1904-1905).

Then in 1907, he painted the critical work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , which was inspired by Primitivism, and presaged the advent of Cubism--the revolutionary artistic movement created by Picasso and Braque. Picasso was simultaneously influenced by and a primary influence upon practically every artistic and intellectual movement of the twentieth century, particularly Surrealism. Gertrude Stein, Picasso's friend and patron, wrote of his work, "His drawings were not of things seen but of things expressed, in short they were words for him and drawing always was his only way of talking and he talks a great deal." Aside from the Blue Period, where his work commonly depicted the poor and abandoned, Picasso's political statements in his art were rare, yet powerful. In 1937, provoked by the aerial bombing of the village of Guernica by Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso created his antiwar masterpiece of the same name. While not a member of the French Resistance during World War II, Picasso did remain in Paris when many others chose safety elsewhere.

He did join the Communist Party in 1944, however, which may have subsequently affected the market for his work; nevertheless, he remained a member the rest of his life. Picasso's biographer John Richardson has noted, "Everything about Picasso is interesting. Even the most trifling facts of his personal life turn out to be valuable clues which explain his unpredictable changes of subject, style, or mood....If he acquires a new mistress, her presence will at once be reflected in his work." Picasso's personal life inspired so much of his art that connoisseurs cannot help but acquaint themselves with the vagaries of his romantic relationships. His comment on the subject was, "I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid. The future will choose the pages it prefers." Picasso's considerable artistic output continued practically unabated up to his death on April 8, 1973.

While Picasso the public figure may have suffered from the stereotypes that come with our modern over-mediatization, some of which he encouraged, Picasso the artist's posthumous reputation remains intact, particularly considering the enormous impact his work has had on the development of twentieth century artistic movements. Sources: Photographs. Scope and Contents The organization of the Françoise Gilot Collection respects the arrangement formally imposed upon it by Carlton Lake: I. Works, 1964-1965 (8 boxes); II. Correspondence, 1951-1957 (1 folder); and III. Pablo Picasso, 1944-1952 (2 boxes). The bulk of the collection is comprised of drafts for the English and French editions of Life with Picasso . These include the earliest corrected typescript of the first draft, corrections primarily in the hand of Carlton Lake. In addition, an untitled play that Gilot apparently wrote near the beginning of her relationship with Picasso is also present. Gilot and Lake used the documents present in the second and third series during the writing of their book.

Gilot writes of her return from her honeymoon with Luc Simon in 1955 to find that Picasso had vacated their villa La Galloise , and none of her possessions remained--apart from "the beds and a few chairs, three boxes of papers stored in the attic--where no one, apparently, had thought of looking--and that's all." Some of the letters have identifying notations made in the hand of Carlton Lake. Several of them were recorded verbatim in the book, while others demonstrate Gilot's restraint in what she revealed about the family--notably concerning Paul Picasso's 1951 breakdown and family problems. The second series is represented by one folder of correspondence to Gilot from the art dealers Louise Leiris and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. These letters document Gilot's personal relationship with the dealers, as well as the preparations for her 1952 one-woman exhibition at the Galerie Louise Leiris. The third series is devoted primarily to correspondence written to Pablo Picasso during the years 1944-1952. While the letters are primarily arranged alphabetically by author, some are often grouped by subject.

For example, the folder containing letters from Olga Picasso, also include letters written by third parties concerning her. These were artistically rich years for Picasso, when he began to experiment with lithography and ceramics, and the letters from his secretary Jaime Sabartés partially record this process. In addition, Picasso's relations with various Communist organizations, as well as his 1948 trip to Poland, are documented by the letters of several correspondents--notably those from Paul Eluard. Picasso's personal life is reflected in the letters written to him by his children Paul and Maya, by his first wife Olga, and his companions Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Geneviève Laporte, and Françoise Gilot. In addition, several family photos are included in the correspondence of Marie-Thérèse Walter. Acquisition: Picasso: Love & War 1935-1945 Collection Dora Maar, Musée National Picasso, Paris, MP 1998-222 © Dora Maar/ADAGP.

Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2006 A Journey Through the Exhibition Guernica An Introduction to Guernica On April 26 1937, late in the afternoon, the undefended Basque town of Guernica was bombed relentlessly for three hours by German and Italian aircraft that were acting on the instructions of Franco's Nationalist forces. The horrific campaign experimented with the potency of modern warfare, including incendiary bombs, explosives and shrapnel and was deliberately aimed at destruction of the civilian population. Escort planes that plunged from the sky to strafe people fleeing from the town exacerbated the massacre. The town was razed to the ground. Of the ten thousand inhabitants and refugees who made up the population of Guernica, three thousand were estimated to have died and thousands more were injured and mutilated. When newspaper reports of the brutal attack appeared the following day the world was shocked and outraged, particularly as the attack took place on market day. Also, most of the inhabitants of Guernica were women, children and the elderly, because the younger men were away fighting in the Republican army.

To access Bombing of Guernica: original Times report from 1937: Picasso had never been moved to engage in overtly political art, but his deep sorrow at the outbreak of civil war in his homeland (where his cousins were fighting on the Republican side), and his relationship with the politically charged Dora Maar, a member of the French Communist Party, had galvanized the passionate Spaniard into publicising his outrage. Early in 1937 he began the Dream and Lie of Franco, a series of fourteen etchings designed to be published as individual postcards to raise funds for 'Governmental Spain'. Resembling a comic strip, they evoked a traditional form of satiric Catalan engraving and depicted Franco as a giant, grotesque, demonic dictator in a series of ridiculous postures and costumes, including the elaborate attire of a courtesan. A nightmarish parody of civil war and a protest against Franco's claim to be a champion of traditional Spanish culture, the works show him in various frames riding a mad and disembowelled horse, destroying a classical sculpture or mounted on a pig. In each case Franco is leaving a trail of death and destruction.

The key messages were in no doubt, that Franco was an oppressor of the common people, an enemy of the arts and a murderer of women and children. When news of the bombing of Guernica reached Picasso he was stunned and horrified to such an extent that he was again driven to respond with impassioned political statements. He added four new plates to the Dream and Lie of Franco series that were first printed in the journal Cahiers d'Art in 1937, and later as a portfolio with an epic poem by the artist mourning the tragic events in Spain. 'Cries of children cries of women cries of birds cries of flowers cries of wood and of stones cries of bricks cries of furniture of beds of chairs of curtains of casseroles of cats and paper cries of smells that claw themselves of smoke that gnaws the neck of cries that boil in cauldron and the rain of birds that floods the sea that eats into bone and breaks the teeth biting the cotton that the sun wipes on its plate that bourse and bank hide in the footprint left embedded in the rock..

' The above is Picasso's poem accompanying the Dream and Lie of Franco Picasso was appointed honorary director of the Prado in 1936 and commissioned by the Spanish Republican Government to create a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the World Fair being held in Paris in 1937. He started on a large painting based on the theme of The Studio: The Painter and His Model. The emotional wave of horror and indignation following the barbaric attack on Guernica led Picasso to instead create what was to become one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art – a monumental outpouring of grief and rage condemning the senselessness of war. The Making of Guernica Picasso moved into a new studio in the attic of 7, rue des Grands-Augustins, which Dora Maar found for him in early 1937. Originally part of a grand 17th-century mansion, it had an intriguing history that appealed to Picasso's sense of irony, particularly as he was painting Guernica. The studio was said to be the setting for The Unknown Masterpiece, a short story written in 1837 by the famous French author, Honoré de Balzac.

It describes an obsession by the painter, Frenhofer, the greatest painter of his time, to represent the absolute on his canvas, a process that takes years for his creative powers to complete. When the picture, which becomes less and less recognizable as time goes on, is ridiculed by his artist friends as the work of a madman, he destroys the work and dies. The story resonated with Picasso who, like Frenhofer, also locked himself away in the same studio to create a masterpiece, although in his case it was recognized as such. Picasso made hundreds of preliminary drawings for Guernica and more than fifty studies. In some of these the heads of Weeping Women appear for the first time. Constraints such as the enormous size of the stretched canvas, measuring 3.5 x 7.8 metres and so had to be tilted to fit under the rafters of the ceiling, and dim lighting from bay windows on one side of the studio, failed to hinder Picasso. The painting was completed in twenty-four frenetic days. Streams of ideas, emotions, traditions, myths, obsessions and symbols of his roots deeply embedded in Hispanic and Mediterranean culture spilled onto the canvas.

These were fuelled by anger and a need to express his pain. Motifs of a woman screaming in agony as she clutches the limp body of her dead child; another woman stretching out from a window with a lamp, hoping in vain to illuminate the encroaching darkness; mutilated bodies and the gaping mouths of those hysterical with pain, fear and sorrow merge with a wounded horse and the ever-present bull to create a profound dramatic tension. The gruesome imagery encircled by burning buildings and painted in black, white and subtle gradations of grey, suggests that Picasso may have drawn on newspaper photographs and newsreels documenting the tragedy in Guernica. The fine patterning in the centre of the painting resembles words on torn pieces of newspaper, suggesting that art is as powerful as the mass media in communicating a message. Chaos and despair are amplified by sharp, angular shapes, particularly the bold triangular form at the centre of the painting and vivid contrasts of light and shade.

Purity of line from Picasso's Neo-classical period, elements of Surrealism and Cubism, and a reference to Goya's famous painting of 1814 depicting the horrors of war, El Tris de Mayo (Third of May), coexist in this summation of Picasso's development as an artist to date. Speculations about the exact meaning of the symbolism in Guernica have varied. Some insist that the bull represents brutality or the ritual of life and death epitomised by the bullfight, while the horse is a metaphor for the suffering people. Others suggest that the reverse is true and maintain that the bull signifies the people and the horse can be read as Franco's Nationalist forces. Picasso was adamant that he had not intended to symbolise in such a concrete way and it was entirely up to the viewers to interpret the painting. A photographic record of a masterpiece The creation of Guernica was to stimulate an even greater personal closeness and deeper professional understanding between artist and photographer when Picasso asked Dora to document his art in the making. Her photographic record brings to life the intensity and passion of Picasso at work and provides the first complete record of a Modern work of art in the making.

Dora's documentation of the eight key successive stages clearly explains both the development of the work and the multiple transformations that occurred during the course of its journey. The photographs reveal that the bull's head, for example, changes direction over time, and that Picasso experimented with applying strips of coloured paper collage to the painting that were later removed. Dora gives insightful glimpses into the workings of Picasso's artistic genius as he composes, adds, experiments and deletes in the search for perfection. The constant conversation between the painting in progress and its photographic recording manifests in a number of ways. The dramatic intensity of the dark tones slowly making their appearance felt as the painting evolves can be likened to the gradual appearance of an image in a developing tray. In a more concrete way, the tonal variations Picasso observed in Dora's photographs appear to have influenced the development of those in the middle stages of the painting. Guernica was to be published as postcards for sale at the exhibition (to fund the Spanish Republican war effort), which also meant that Picasso must constantly consider how the painting would work as a photographic image on a small scale.

The composition has at its heart a white triangle of light projected by a naked light globe, resembling the dazzling eye of a flash bulb used to take photographs in the dark. Dora again demonstrated her skill and innovation as a photographer, unobtrusively recording the passion and energy of Picasso at work, the physical challenges of working on a monumental scale and the emotional power of the painting as it materialised. Picasso moved the lighting as he worked, sometimes causing halos and spots to appear in the photographs. In order to correct these defects, Dora manipulated the photographs taken at stages one and two through the process of photomontage. She cut out and rearranged sections from several shots and attached them to a background with drawing pins before photographing them again. Dora's influence was again embedded in the masterpiece of Guernica, created in perhaps the most impassioned and innovative period of Picasso's career. Her presence is recorded in the painting as the face of the woman bearing the lamp. We also know that she painted a few vertical strokes on the image of the horse.

At the heart of Guernica, however, is the unique fusion of Picasso's painting and Dora's photography, sparked by the empathy between two fiercely inventive minds attuned to the world in such a similar way. Guernica - Quick facts and figures Length of execution – 24 days Size – 3.5 X 7.76 metres – 27 square metres of oil paint Henry Moore, the famous British sculptor, and Salvador Dali, renowned Surrealist artist, visited Picasso's studio to see Guernica in progress, adding to the mystique surrounding the story of this historic work. 1937 – 1937 - Picture acquired by the Spanish Republican government for a total of 200,000 francs – ten percent of the pavilion's total cost. 1937 – First displayed in the Spanish Pavilion at the World Fair in Paris. 1938 – Toured Scandinavia and Great Britain 1939 – Travelled around the US until 1944 when it was installed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

1981 – Guernica was returned to Picasso's country of birth in the year of his centenary, following negotiations made by the now-democratic government of Spain. 1992 – After initial residence at the Cason del Buen Retiro Museum, Guernica made the journey to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. Due to the vigorous brushwork and intense physical movement of Picasso as he executed Guernica, it can be seen as a precursor to Action Painting, a style made famous in the 1950s by the American painter, Jackson Pollock. Questions for Further Discussion: Discuss which art elements contribute to making Guernica a powerful and universal statement about the horrors of war. Why did Picasso make Guernica monochromatic? Does this painting resonate as much today as it did in the 1930s and 1940s ? Discuss. What does the documentation of the making of a great work of art contribute to our understanding of the artist and the artwork? Study the key stages of Guernica photographed by Dora Maar. Discuss the alterations, additions and deletions that took place until its completion. How do they make a difference to the final work?

Discuss the similarities and differences between Goya's famous painting of 1814 depicting the horrors of war, El Tris de Mayo (Third of May) and Guernica. Research other great works of art that explore the horror of war. What evidence is there to suggest that Picasso has made reference to photography, newsreels and mass media in the painting? Picasso did not want to explain the symbolism in the painting. He was adamant that viewers should construct their own interpretation. List all of the motifs in Guernica such as the bare light bulb, the bull and the woman holding a dead child and discuss their particular meaning to you. What symbols would you create to symbolise these meanings? Locate a picture of Picasso's The Charnel House, 1944-45, oil on canvas (which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art, New York), in a book or on the internet. What is going on in this painting? In what ways is it similar to Guernica? Other References (Preparing for Your Visit)

Question: Which political party did Picasso join in 1944?
Answer: Communist