Landmark Picasso exhibition comes to Tate Liverpool thanks to new research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and shows that rather than being just the extrovert and playboy widely portrayed by the media he was also a tireless political activist and campaigner for peace.

The recent sale of a Picasso painting in New York for over $100m shows that there is still a hunger for his work. Yet, during the last 30 years of his life Picasso was not personally welcome in the USA although there was a thriving market in buying and selling his art. The research undertaken by co-curator Professor Lynda Morris, from Norwich University College of the Arts, involved visiting archives in Paris and the USA to view political papers and letters sent to Picasso – in some instances for the very first time. This correspondence not only puts his work of that time in to a political context but also enabled Professor Morris to specify which artworks were essential for the exhibition.

AHRC Research Fellow Professor Morris with Dr. Christoph Grunenberg (Director, Tate Liverpool),is co-curator of the Picasso: Peace and Freedom art exhibition that opens at Tate Liverpool on Friday May 21st. Professor Morris’s role in co-curating the exhibition has involved three months working at the Picasso archive in France and accessing, for the first time in detail, the 37 boxes of political correspondence it held.

Professor Morris said “One of the key discoveries to come out of my research has been that Picasso dated his work in these years on a daily basis. You can go back and see how political events of the time were influencing his subjects. His choice of black and white for many of these political works reflect the newsreels and newspapers of the period that were inspiring him. In addition, when you look at the major political news stories of the day you can see that the political satires of Goya and Daumier were a key element of many of these works.

In 1939 Picasso tried to supported the Spanish Civil War Republican Refugees who were placed in internment camps in France including his two nephews. Many of them suffered in Vichy France under the German occupation. After 1945 Picasso supported hospitals and an orphanage looking after the survivors around Toulouse on the border with Spain.”

This major exhibition has brought together over 150 works by Picasso from across the world. In addition to key paintings and drawings related to war and peace from 1944-1973 the exhibition also has a wide range of contextual materials and ephemera including two telegrams from Fidel Castro. The centrepiece is The Charnel House 1944-45 from Museum of Modern Art in New York, marking 50 years since it was last seen in the UK. This remarkable work was Picasso’s most explicitly political painting since Guernica 1937. Other key works in the exhibition include The Rape of the Sabine Women 1962, painted at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis with the world on the verge of a Third World War.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was arguably the most influential and prolific artist of the 20th century but after 1944 when he joined the Communist Party he became a figurehead of left-wing causes. From then on his paintings frequently reference and comment upon key historical moments, chronicling human conflict and war, but also a desire for peace.

This is the first exhibition to explore the post-War period of the artist’s life in depth and provides a timely look at Picasso’s work in the Cold War era and how the artist transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of East and West.

Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said: “Support for the arts from the Research Councils enriches our daily lives. World leading UK research has uncovered the stories behind every brushstroke in this Picasso exhibition.

I am sure this exhibition will help expand our knowledge of this most enigmatic and influential artist - and challenge long held perceptions of him.”

AHRC Chief Executive, Professor Rick Rylance, said of the exhibition, “It is great to see AHRC-supported research enabling a major international exhibition. Professor Morris’s research is wonderfully illuminating about how one of the greatest artists of the twentieth-century engaged with the turbulent and destructive post war period. Visitors to Tate Liverpool are in for a visual feast. But they will also understand far more about the personal and historical circumstances that shaped these paintings and their often ferocious commentary on our times.”

Picasso's politics mattered because he was an important artist. The last taboo in the study of Picasso has been his membership of the Communist Party from 1944 until his death. During this time French/Swiss art dealers were able to sell his pictures to American galleries and collectors enabling Picasso to maintain his millionaire's life style and his PCF integrity. It was at this time that Picasso's Dove of Peace became the emblem of the Peace Congresses in Wroclaw, Paris, Stockholm, Sheffield and Rome. In 1950 Picasso arrived at Victoria Station in London for the Sheffield Peace Congress. He was detained for twelve hours by Immigration before his friend Roland Penrose secured his release. Picasso never visited England again, not even for Roland Penrose's exhibition of his work at Tate 1960.

Also in 1950 Picasso applied for a visa to visit the USA as one of the Partisans for Peace to present the Stockholm Peace Appeal Against Atomic Weapons to the US Congress. His request was refused and he never visited the USA but he did become the symbol of the freedom of the artist in the West. Picasso made a series of History Paintings in the post war period; The Charnel House 1944, Massacre in Korea 1950, War and Peace 1951. War shows the god of war releasing giant bacteria, a reference to accusations of US use of germ warfare in Korea. These murals were criticised in the West as Picasso's least successful paintings. In the East he was criticised for his refusal to take the Communist Party line on Socialist Realism.

In addition to the exhibition Professor Morris and Professor Jonathan Harris at Liverpool University have organised a symposium on Picasso that takes place on Friday May 21st at the University of Liverpool. Entitled Political Picasso: Peace and Freedom in the Cold War it sets out to radically reassess the significance of Picasso's involvement in the Cold War dominated politics of the late 1940s-60s. The conference investigates the understanding that Picasso's politically inspired artworks had in a range of European countries inside and outside the Soviet bloc, and in the world beyond.

Image - Dove with Olive Branch (Colombe au rameau d'olivier), 28 December 1961
Colour lithograph on paper, print
505 x 660 mm
Courtesy Saint-Denis - Musée d'art et d'histoire and Irène Andréani
© Succession Picasso/DACS 2010

END
Editor’s notes

For quotes or to arrange an interview with Professor Lynda Morris please contact AHRC’s Communications Manager: Jake Gilmore, 01793 416021

Picasso: Peace and Freedom is organised by Tate Liverpool in collaboration with the Albertina, Vienna where it will be shown following its presentation in Liverpool. Vienna hosted the World Peace Congress in 1952, promoted by a poster featuring Picasso’s drawing of a dove surrounded by a circle of interlocking hands.

Picasso: Peace and Freedom is curated by Professor Lynda Morris, AHRC Research Fellow and Curator, EASTinternational, Norwich University College of the Arts, and Dr. Christoph Grunenberg, Director, Tate Liverpool. The exhibition is supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £112 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,300 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.