Dove peace symbol picasso biography

This year global interest in the work of Picasso is rekindled, due in part to the temporary closure and refurbishment of the Picasso Museum in Paris. This inimitable repository represents pieces that the artist retained with the intention of shaping his own artistic legacy, and its closure presents an opportunity for his works to travel to exhibitions around the world.

As these exhibitions reveal, Picasso had an innate ability to evolve through time and history, creating formidable works that mirrored the political and social context in which they were created, yet simultaneously transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of East and West. During his long life Picasso witnessed both World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and Korean War, and each conflict exerted a powerful presence in the development of his work.

In he painted the universally acclaimed Guernica , one of the most gut-wrenching depictions of the Spanish Civil War, which still retains its pre-eminence amongst the most hotly debated paintings of the twentieth-century. However, it is worth remembering that Picasso had been essentially apolitical before the Spanish Civil War; it was the German and Italian aerial attack on the Basque village of Guernica that contributed to his altered perspective on life, resulting in this apocalyptic interpretation of a widely condemned terror bombing.

Picasso spent most of the occupation in Paris, refusing offers for exile from the US and other countries. Following the emancipation of Paris in , Picasso - previously the leading practitioner of an art denounced by the fascists - became a hero of the liberation. Motivated by idealistic and humanitarian concerns, Picasso joined the French Communist Party, believing Communism offered a path removed from the fascist atrocities of World War Two and the Spanish Civil War.

His decision met with considerable controversy, generating an ongoing debate regarding his affiliation and the potential impact of this on his work. Certainly, after Picasso became a figurehead for left-wing causes, and it was during this period that the political content of his practise rose to the fore, with works that referenced crucial historical moments, chronicling human conflict and devastation, albeit exerting a strong desire for peace.

In January Picasso created Dove, an image that became an iconographic symbol of the period, frequently utilised in the propaganda war of the left and the Peace Movement, and one that became an emblem of hope during the Cold War. The image portrays the exquisite white dove on a black background, rendered in lithographic ink wash.

Where is the dove of peace located

According to Mourlot, this work was one of the most technically astute and beautiful lithographs ever achieved through this medium. The image was to become a universal phenomenon - it was selected for the poster of the First International Peace Congress in Paris in , with Picasso later providing variations on the theme for the Peace Congresses in Wroclaw, Stockholm, Sheffield, Vienna, Rome and Moscow.

The Peace Movement distributed images signed by Picasso, which were then multiplied throughout the world, creating an aura of notoriety around the artist and catapulting him to new heights of recognisability.