Art-O-Gram: Picasso-an artist and three wars

Pablo Picasso is "the artist" for many people, and the person Picasso is really becoming more and more impressive the more you deal with her. Impressive from several aspects, this is about the political artist Picasso .

A reminder for all people of today

In the long and eventful life of the Cubist, a reality of life had a great weight that hardly seems conceivable for a German living today in middle age. His life and thinking was overshadowed by wars that concerned him in his respective life situation.

So that everyone in the 21st than in the 20th century becomes clear what status war was in the 20th century: in the 20th century there were around 140 wars , and the list of wars that touched Picasso's life directly is impressive:

• 1893, shortly after his 12th birthday, the first Rif War between Spain and Morocco began, because of the death of a famous Spanish military governor, it was also discussed in Spain, although the fighting took place in Morocco.
• 1895 –1898 the Cuban liberation army fought for the autonomy of Cuba in the Cuban War of Independence against Spain.
• 1896–1898 The Philippines fought against the Spanish colonial power in the Filipino Revolution.
• 1898 He experienced how Spain lost his last significant colonies in the Spanish-American War.
• 1909 The Spaniards of the exclave Melilla fought against Morocco on North African coast.
• since 1900 and had all the European crises there, which finally
• 1914 culminated in the First World War. As soon as there was peace in 1918, broke
• 1921 The third rif war between Spain and Morocco, which Spain only won in 1926 through the use of mustard gas violating international law (a gas use with cancer consequences to this day).
• 1936 the Spanish civil war began, in which the right -wing coups under General Francisco Franco succeeded until April 1939 to democratically chosen People's Horse government of Spain and to establish a dictatorship that lasted until Franco's death in 1975,
• 1939 started the Second World War, which ran until 1945 and stuck the artist until 1944 without a travel permit in Paris.

That was 9 wars in which his home country or his place of residence were involved, between the age of 12 and 63, Picasso experienced 28 years, in which life took place in his world, and only 25 years in which no war surrounded him (many of these years were determined by political unrest and crises that later floated in wars).

After 1945 until the death of the Cubist master in 1973, another 40 wars took place, which he opposes many political actions, he has been very committed to the fight against aggressive war policy.

Always doubts: Picasso's controversial position as a political artist

If we deal with him today, we can read many critical comments on "Picasso as a political artist" .

His political attitude was "sentimental", or it is classified as "perhaps naive" . He was "still in the Spirit of the Résance" in 1944 , even if he never left it - it sounds a little as if he had simply left her out of laziness, the other way around, such a "laziness" will be blamed again: he is resented again that he remained communist until his death in 1973, nor the Hungarian uprising to the Pragar Immediate exit moved.

Another tenor: he has exerted (snapped?) To attack Soviet squad, always with the same sentence: The only thing that counts is the rescue of the revolution. So here he is assumed not to see that the behavior of Soviet politicians is dangerous, repeated, only this sentence is actually anything but often handed down by the artist himself ...

We can read that "Picasso was not a renegate", his protests against communist riots at the time of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 or the Prague spring 1968 are called "defiant", a term that is more likely to be in kindergarten, his art is interpreted "apolitically": not every dead skull, not every vanitas motif and not every dark still life is a political life The artist's statement, and he had defended himself against excessive attributions anyway.

It is criticized that the late series in which he worked up old master would be "put on" political content from posterity, because Picasso could not be taken too literally. Why this should be the case is of course not justified by the respective critic from the amount of his expert assessment.

From his long-time art dealer David-Henry Kahnweiler, the saying is even given that he was "the most apolitical man he has ever met."

Overall, after reading such lines you can hardly defend yourself with the impression that "Picasso as a political artist" was not that far ago.

Is that really like that?

Picasso's art - disabled and shaped by wars

Again: Picasso experienced 9 wars in direct concern, 28 years with war and 25 years without. These wars (for those who take a closer look) have demonstrated his thinking:

He got the first impression of war at 16 when his country was beaten as quickly as it was devastating Spanish-American War The acts of war took place near the Spanish colonial areas, so the then 16-year-old artist did not experience any physically noticeable warlike threats, but yet the first intellectual suggestion to devote much more to war and peace than can be found in reports about him.

RIF wars between Morocco and Spain , which took place on the African continent, were certainly a topic of discussion in his family or circle of friends, he had lived in Málaga up to the age of 10, on the coast.

Picasso's Parisian friend and colleague of the Paris Cubismus period, Fernand Léger , died almost in a German mustard gas attack in the First World War, so it will not have left him unmoved when his country won the third RIF War in 1921, by pulling over 10,000 mustard gas containers to the opponents.

Anyone who deals a little more thoroughly with Picasso's life knows that at the time in Madrid he studied the museums and the artists' bars as the Royal Academy when the literary intellectuals of the "Generation of 98" (generation of 98) were busy with the shameful defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War and the loss of the supremacy of Spain as the influential colonial power process.

The situation in the country was tense, social and political, anarchist ideals were changed, and the 17-year-old Picasso received all the currents of this intellectual reorientation of Spain to Europe, he experienced the returning wounded soldiers and their deep misery. The Spanish artist also hired himself political:

On December 29, 1900, the "Manifesto of the Spanish colony based in Paris" , in which he called for an arars of anarchists (based on antimilitarian agitation) and for Spanish citizens who had fled to France before the military service.

As a result, he was classified as anarchist by a Paris police commissioner in June 1901, which should cost him French citizenship and thus freedom of travel in World War II.

Many years of war and many misdeeds in humanity should follow that accompanied him into old age: When the First World War broke out, it was 32 when the Second World War was over, 63 years old.

From 1914 to 1918, Picasso's career was suddenly interrupted by the First World War - he broke out when Picasso was just having to conquer the European art world. He spent war in France, but his German art dealer Kahnweiler had to leave the country - while his fame grew among art connoisseurs, there were hardly any exhibitions, only from 1918 he was represented by art dealers again, by Paul Rosenberg and Georges Wildenstein , with which he stayed connected until shortly before World War II.

In the meantime, his life was shaken by the Spanish Civil War , which between 1936 and 1939 transformed his home country into a dictatorship. The battle of the couping military began with the bloody submission of the port city of a Coruña, in which he had lived up to the age of 14.

From Paris, Picasso supported the democratic government of Spain in her fight against the coupist Franco. While the situation in Spain was still anything but pacified - the Spanish civil war officially ended on April 1, 1939, but Franco's reprisals against political opponents were continued with extreme hardness - the international situation ceded in a worrying way until the Second World War began with the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939.

Because he had directed Franco, he was banned from exhibition from the National Socialists , from the beginning of the German occupation in 1940 to the liberation of Paris August 1944 in his Paris studio.

Modern art was not tolerated by the Parisian occupation government . And "Matisse in the garbage box!" around. When he was freed (with Paris) in 1944, he joined the Communist Party.

To say that all the year in the shade of wars did not leave any traces in the artist's attitude and works, is really brazen, and also quite simple -minded.

Picasso's work was highly politically and against the war from the start, and that should not change in the years of life after the Second World War, on the contrary. When Kahnweiler said that he was "the most apolitical man he had ever met", the calculation was to open the American market to the artist protesting against US war policy (which he did not succeed, he never got a visa and never saw the USA).

Picasso had his own opinion

Those who take a closer look will rather find that they have led some of his interviewers and art -free conversation partners with pleasure and rather cunningly on the nose.

As in the area of ​​art, he had the courage to have his own opinion, and it certainly speaks more for him than against him that he "never got nailed to a location", only simple natures can be stuck.

The artist changed his opinion when he thought it was appropriate, and he saw many topics not black and white, but with intermediate tones. So of course he was "always ready for and against the academy, for and against tradition, for and against political commitment", always for a look at the respective connection.

Unlike many of his so highly intellectual friends, he was also a man of the decision, the did more as a man of debates. What he is loved by everyone who was able to experience how political injustices and undesirable developments flourished more and more violently due to years of debates.

By the way: Picasso was an adult aesthet , even in his different opinions of an amazing acuity and irony. In addition to such a man, dictatorial rulers, who worshiped dogmas down of socialist realism, not only climbed, but also quite quickly.

When he was familiar enough for this, the creative and highly stubborn head did quite often what he wanted, whether it was about a dictator's portrait (Stalin as a young Georgian farmer without the party -official attributes) or about disrespectful criticism from the United States, only apolitical, that was rarely, at the place. But certainly not in his life, or in his art:

Picasso - art as a political weapon

Picasso - Art as a political weapon Doku 2013 by Laurence Thiriat recording: Arte October 26, 2014. In his painting, he expressed everything the Spanish master of Cubism had to say.

The war in Picasso's work

Unimpressed by the “prevailing opinion”, he “political art” , from the beginning and until the end of life:

Political statements can be found under his first works: After the death of his little sister, the shaken family had moved to the other end of Spain in 1895, from the tranquil port city of a Coruña in the northwest to Barcelona in the northeast.

Barcelona was the Spanish city, in which industrialization celebrated the worst flowers, with extreme social differences and a catastrophic situation of the workers, wages were pathetic, unemployment high, working conditions in the factories were with the worst in Europe.

In such a city naturally, Spanish anarchism a lot of supporters, Barcelona experienced numerous anarchist attacks in the 1890s when he came to the city at the age of 14, he came to a climate in which the working people were bad and bombing attacks with human sacrifices and shootings were the order of the day.

The teenager did not remain unimpressed, the drawing "Caridad" (mercy) with an obviously betting family, who are flared in alms and an indifferent bourgeois carriage (1899) testifies. B., and there are other corresponding drawings.

So Picasso came into contact early in his life with a kind of state of war and the resulting social desasters, and he met the artists in Barcelona through his artist father, who dealt with social and political issues and were influenced by anarchism in their thinking, this was also reflected in his circle of acquaintances and put the police on his way there.

The events of the Spanish civil war deeply shaken Picasso, and of course he also expressed this in his art: his painting "Guernica" believes that the Basque city covered the German Legion Condor on April 26, 1937 when the bombing of the German Legion Condor, it should become the most famous anti -war . During this time, however, many other pictures were taken that remind the viewer of Goya's stirring painting "horror of the war".

His commitment went through, but the titles of the pictures were later often embezzled by auction houses and gallery owners as not promoting sales, "mother and child in profile" was called in 1902 ". Mother and child " , who " designed on the beach " were " the impoverished on the banks of the sea " .

A series of Collages, which he created from 1912 to 1914, were generally downplayed as an abstract work until an American art scientist took a closer look at the texts and discovered a reference to the crises that were preceded by the First World War- Picasso has observed the emerging risk of war .

Picassos Minotaurs also anything but harmless bullfighting animals for the arena: Since the time after the First World War, he has been in lively contact with the anti -war communist party in France (PCF, Parti Communiste Français) that started in 1920.

When he turned to surrealism from about 1924, in close contact with writers and visual artists such as Louis Aragon, André Breton, Paul éluard, Benjamin Péret and Pierre Unik , who also saw their work politically and were temporarily or for many years of members of the PCF.

Around 1925, numerous works by Picasso, his famous Minotaur motif appeared in his works in his works in the magazine La Révolution Surréaliste the surrealistic artist magazine Minotaur , with a knife-reinforced Minotaur from Picasso The first number.

The artist's etching series from 1935 referred to Francisco de Goyas Tauromaquia from around 1815, and it was by no means just about “the connection between sexuality, violence and death, but was a tangible political commitment for the Spaniards who fought against the Napoleonic foreign rule.

Picassos Minotaurs were almost as political and not just "inspired by his fascination for bullfighting" like many others of his works. This is now z. B. for the gouache "La dé Pouille du Minotaure" ("The remains of the Minotaur") painted in 1936, in which the un animal wobbled symbolizes the danger of fascism.

During the Second World War in Paris, he does what he can do. B. High sums for the support of the miners obliged to work for forced labor in the Pas de Calais. As soon as he can escape his Parisian arrest during the Second World War, the artist moves to the south of France, in calm freedom, but he is by no means quieter:

"Das Beinhaus" (1944/45) was started in Paris , with prisoners' knotted bodies that can come from the Spanish Civil War or from a French internment camp created by Hitler.

In 1952 the two pictures "War and Peace" , from 1952, were created in Vallauris in the porch of a Romanesque chapel at the castle of Vallauris, which the municipality of Vallauris made available to the painter.

Picasso's "Temple of Peace" contrasts the peace in two monumental compositions that meet again in the vault on the ceiling. "La Guerre" (War) and "Le Paix" (Peace) were against the Korean War, as were the impressive "Massacres en Corée" (massacre in Korea) from the same year that an American war crime during the Korean War (1950–1953).

In 1954 he painted the "Women of Algiers" based on the French painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), in a series of 15 paintings and numerous drawings. This is his reaction to the Algerian war, with which Algeria dissolved from France from 1954 to 1962, Picasso's "Women of Algiers" bear resistance.

In 1957 he created various variations of the "Las Meninas" after a famous painting by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. The "Menina cycle" consist of 44 images of the original, 9 pigeon scenes, 3 landscapes and a portrait of his last dear Jacqueline Roque. The painting of Velázquez was important for Picasso for life, he saw it for the first time at the age of fourteen, as the "highlight of the work of world art", he has often dealt with Velázquez 'Menina, the 1957 series is the end of this fascination.

Las Meninas reminds him of the early death of his sister, reflects his struggle for true art up to the age of 75 again, his anger and despair because of the increasing criticism of his late work (and are proof against it), the whole life of Picasso is included in these pictures: The little infantine stands for his idea of ​​innocence and purity, preserving forever in the 44 attempt of the perfect innocent child Pigeons stand for his belief in peace, the "war -threatening" mastiff of the Spanish king, he replaces with his friendly Dachshund Lump.

Picassos continuously supported, with considerable financial contributions, and he made drawings, always on the titles of the respective newspapers printed statements on the situation with considerable influence.

Later, in the middle of the Cold War, he puts up his stamp to the world peace, with the worldwide symbol of the peace dust , and Picassos really deserves with his lifelong political commitment that everyone knows that the peace dust was conceived by him.

His political influence can still be felt in politics today: When the Iraq war emerged in February 2003 and the American Foreign Minister Colin Powell campaigned for the War in front of the UN Security Council, the wall carpet was covered with its "Guernica" in the UN building in New York-the blunt view of the famous anti-war image appeared to be contrary.

Can we learn something from this discussion about Picasso's political work? Oh yes, and not what all the art critics imagine that, as a political artist, cannot be taken seriously: We can learn that it is dangerous if a caste trained in a certain way is to acquire interpretation skills about "the truth" because everyone else has no idea ...

In our everyday life, such a striving can be observed in many ways if e.g. For example, a civil judge announces that "finding truth in a civil process is not interested in" and only the opposite has to be convinced by the Federal Constitutional Court. Even a perhaps naive protest á la Picasso will help to counteract a crumbling of the rule of law in many areas of our society, as reserved intellectual regret without consequences in reality.

"I am for life against death; I am for peace against war" , in most cases it is so easy to take a position in social images, and then it is no longer difficult to act accordingly.

And if he has "jumped up" with his reinterpretation of manet's "breakfast outdoors" in the opinion of some art critics on the sexual revolution of the 1960s-should you probably simply treat him to the sexual revolution in France in 1967, when he was 86 years old (more on this topic is in the "Art-O-Gramm: Picasso-The Love and Love " read).

Picasso's life is described in the "Art-O-Gram: Picasso-a long life for art", his work and ingenuity are about in the "Art-O-Gram: Picasso-born the artist" and in the "Art-O-Gramm: Picasso-Famous Art and her secret" , the aftermath of his work until today will be in the "Art-O-Gramm:" Picasso-a guarantee for top ranking " "Art-O-Gram: Picasso today" illuminated.