Mediterranean landscape. 1952
Paysage mediterraneen Ripolin on shipboard. 81 x 125 Private collection
sons.
cm
Communist Party was using Picasso for propagandist reaHis commitment to the Communist cause was necessarily no more
Essentially, the
than an episode in the immediate post-war years.
Still,
Picasso persisted in
expressing his general humanitarian and political concerns ing the period
when he was questioning
painting two huge murals
(p.
164
consecrated 14th-century chapel
f.)
in
which
work. Durarts,
he was
on the subject of war and peace for a de-
at Vallauris.
cember, though they were not installed kind of frieze
in his
Party sovereignty in the
till
They were completed
1954.
a horse-drawn chariot
is
War
is
that
De-
symbolized by a
taking the field.
By contrast, The frieze
the other mural (Peace) affords a prospect of unsullied happiness.
shows mothers and playing
children, around the central figure of Pegasus,
pulling a plough at the bidding of one child and so personifying the fertile
world of peace.
commitment was only one aspect of Picasso's creative efforts at The distinctive dichotomy in his activities was not least a result of
Political that time.
particular artistic interests. This
1943 and 1953.
is
clearest in the sculptures he did
between
One of his most famous and characteristic, done in 1943 durwhen Picasso felt utterly isolated.
ing the darkest period of the occupation,
was the Head of a Bull (p. 168). The skeletal head and horns of a bull are conveyed by two found objects which in themselves arc meaningless, a bicycle saddle and handlebars. Picasso subsequently had this assemblage cast in
bronze, thus reassessing the original materials, eliminating the contrasts
and opening out the ambivalence had done
in
o\'
The Glass ofAbsinthe
form.
(p.
91
).
was a continuation o\' what he that famous product of synthetic It