Pablo Picasso
LATER YEARS
- Picasso remained neutral during the
Spanish
Civil War,
World War I and
World War II,
refusing to fight for any side or country. His reason was that he was a
pacifist although some of his contemporaries (including
George Braque)
felt that it had more to do with cowardice than principle. So, while
Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Fascism and war through his art,
he did not take up arms against them.
Left: 1931 (Age 50); Right: 1937
(Age 56)
- In 1944, after the liberation of Paris,
Picasso joined the French
Communist
Party and became an active participant of the Peace Movement.
Left & Right: 1944 (Age 63)
- In 1949, the Paris World Peace
Conference adopted a dove created by Picasso as the symbol of the various
peace movements.
Peace poster 1949
- In both 1950 and 1961, he was awarded
the Lenin Peace Prize because of his protests against the American invasion
in Korea and the Soviet occupation of Hungary. However, the Communist
party's criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled
Picasso's interest in Communist politics.
- Picasso's
reclusive existence intensified after he underwent surgery for a prostate
condition in 1965. This surgery is rumored to have left Picasso largely
impotent. To a man for whom sexual adventure was such an important part of
life, this was a serious life change, and Picasso seems to have dealt with
it by redoubling his already prolific artistic output.
- In his 80s and 90s,
Picasso, no longer quite the energetic dynamo he had been in his youth,
became more, and more reclusive. His second wife, Jacqueline Roque, screened
all but the most important visitors, and closest friends, even excluding
Picasso's two children, Claude and Paloma, both by his former partner, the
painter, Françoise Gilot.
- Throughout Picasso's lifetime, his work
was exhibited on countless occasions. Most unusual, however, was the 1971
exhibition at the Louvre, in Paris,
honoring him on his 90th birthday; until then, living artists had not been
shown there. In 1980 a major retrospective showing of his work was held at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Picasso died in his villa
Notre-Dame-de-Vie near
Mougins on April 8, 1973.
Left: 1945 (Age 64);
Right: Picasso and son
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