Why was Pablo Picasso such a politically engaged artist?
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Picasso’s work took on a more political dimension as the artist became more politically engaged. He produced the series Dream and Lie of Franco in 1937, a sequence of fourteen prints that denounced the regime of Generalissimo Franco. His most iconic work remains the colossal painting entitled Guernica, which depicts the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica by Nazi forces on 26 April 1937. Picasso denounced the horrors of war in this piece, which was his commission for the Spanish pavilion. At the end of the war, Picasso joined the French Communist Party. The artist Pablo Picasso went to Poland in 1948 to attend the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defence of Peace in the city of Wrocław. Picasso’s work entitled La Colombe [The Dove] was chosen to illustrate the poster of the World Peace Congress in Paris in 1949. In 1951, Picasso collaborated with the poet Paul Éluard on the collection Le Visage de la Paix to illustrate his poems.
You can also visit the painter Pablo Picasso’s dedicated page to learn more about the life and paintings of this politically engaged artist.
