Picasso: Peace and Freedom

Tate Liverpool 21 May  –  30 August 2010

Explore:

• Introduction
• Room 1: The Charnel House and Paris after the War
• Room 2: Still Lifes
• Room 3: The Dove of Peace
• Room 4: War and Peace
• Room 5: The Women of Algiers
• Room 6: Las Meninas
• Room 7: Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe
• Room 8: The Rape of the Sabines
• Room 9: Mothers and Musketeers
• Multimedia tour

The Dove of Peace

• 
  Pablo Picasso
  Hands Entwined III
  © Succession Picasso/DACS 2010 Courtesy Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster, Germanyenlarge
• Pablo Picasso
  Claude in Polish Costume, Paris 23 October 1948
  © Succession Picasso/DACS 2010 Courtesy Private Collection
• Pablo Picasso
  Dove with Olive Branch
  © Succession Picasso/DACS 2009 Courtesy Saint-Denis - Musée d'art et d'histoire and Irène Andréani
• Pablo Picasso
  Dove of Peace (Dove of l'Humanite), 16 August 1950
  © Succession Picasso/DACS 2010 Courtesy Saint-Denis - Musée d'art et d'histoire and Irène Andréani
• Pablo Picasso
  White Dove on Black Background
  © Picasso/DACS 2010 Courtesy Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster, Germany

With the Dove of Peace Picasso created an extraordinarily powerful and lasting political symbol, adopted by campaigners for peace, liberation and equality around the globe. Doves also had a highly personal significance for Picasso, going back to childhood memories of his father painting the doves that were kept in the family home. Doves were a frequent presence in Picasso's homes and studios in Paris and in the south of France.

In 1949, the poet and editor Louis Aragon visited Picasso's studio to choose an image for the poster for the inaugural World Peace Congress in Paris in 1949. Aragon chose Picasso's lithograph of a fan-tailed pigeon immediately recognising the value of the image of the dove as a symbol of the Peace Movement. Picasso's daughter was born on the eve of the Paris Peace Congress and he poignantly named her Paloma, the Spanish word for dove. His use of the dove image is closely associated with the relationship between peace and the suffering of women and children in all wars that was a feature of many of his works.

Between 1945 and his death, Picasso produced many benefit editions, posters, prints, drawings and badges featuring the Dove of Peace. Picasso provided new variations of the peace doves for the posters for each of the peace congresses held in Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Vienna, Rome and Moscow. He worked unstintingly for L’Humanité, the French Communist Party newspaper, for Aragon's literary paper, Les Lettres françaises and for the Communist paper Le Patriote de Nice et du Sud-Est.

Multimedia tour

If you have an iPod, iPhone or similar device, download the multimedia tour tracks corresponding to this room:

• The Cold War MP4, 18.7MB
• L'Ateliers (Les Pigeons) MP4, 1.4MB
• Dove M4V, 4.8MB
• La Visage de la Paix MP4, 2.3MB
• Plat à la Colombe MP4, 22.3MB
• L'Humanité no.41 MP4, 3.5MB
• Les Lettres Françaises MP4, 4.2MB
• Socailist Realism MP4, 11.8MB
• L'Humanité Dimanche MP4, 2.5MB
• Head of a Polish Woman MP4, 1.5MB
• Sheffield with Gilbert de Chambrun MP4, 2.3MB
• Scarf, World Festival of Youth and Students M4V, 1.7MB