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19/5/2010

Picasso: Peace and Freedom

Tate Liverpool, Liverpool

With additional support from the Spanish and Andalucía Tourist Offices and the Spanish Embassy Cultural Office. Special thanks to the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte. A major exhibition bringing together over 150 works by Picasso from across the world will be presented at Tate Liverpool from 21 May to 30 August 2010. Picasso: Peace and Freedom will reveal a fascinating new insight into the artist’s life as a tireless political activist and campaigner for peace, challenging the widely-held view of the artist as creative genius, playboy and compulsive extrovert. This is the first exhibition to explore the postwar period of the artist’s life in depth. It looks at Picasso’s work in the Cold War era, and how the artist transcended the ideological and aesthetic oppositions of East and West.

The exhibition will bring together key paintings and drawings related to war and peace from 1944- 1973, alongside a range of contextual materials. The centrepiece will be The Charnel House 1944-45, Picasso’s most explicitly political painting since Guernica 1937, which was last seen in the UK 50 years ago. Monument to the Spaniards who Died for France late 1945 to 31 January 1947 will also feature along with The Rape of the Sabine Women 1962, painted at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Picasso's Dove of Peace became the emblem for the Peace Movement and universal symbol of hope during the Cold War. Picasso’s lithograph of the fan-tailed pigeon given to him by Matisse in 1948 was selected for the poster of the First International Peace Congress held in Paris in 1949. Picasso provided variations on the dove for Congresses in Wroclaw, Stockholm, Sheffield, Vienna, Rome and Moscow. The dove had a personal significance for Picasso invoking childhood memories of his father painting doves. In 1949 Picasso named his daughter ‘Paloma’ – Spanish for ‘dove’ – born in the same month as the Peace Congress in Paris.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was arguably the most influential and prolific artist of the 20th century. After 1944 Picasso became a figurehead of left wing causes. He joined the Communist Party in 1944 and during this period that the political content of his work came to the fore. His paintings frequently reference key historical moments, chronicling human conflict and war, but also a desire for peace. The exhibition is organised by Tate Liverpool in collaboration with the Albertina, Vienna where it will be presented 16 September 2010 – 16 January 2011 (Press View: 15 September 2010). The exhibition will then be displayed at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, 11 February 2011 – 29 May 2011. Picasso: Peace and Freedom is curated by Lynda Morris, AHRC Research Fellow and Curator, EASTinternational, Norwich University College of the Arts, and Dr. Christoph Grunenberg, Director, Tate Liverpool.

Image: Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Skull, Leeks and Pitcher (Nature morte avec crâne, poireaux et pichet) 14 March 1945 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco © Succession Picasso/DACS 2009

For further information please contact the Tate Liverpool Press Office:
Rachel Skelton 0151 702 7444 rachel.skelton@tate.org.uk

Ami Guest 0151 702 7445 ami.guest@tate.org.uk

Tate Liverpool
Albert Dock L3
September – May
Open Tuesday – Sunday, 10.00–17.50
Closed Mondays (except Bank Holiday Mondays and 24 May 2010)
June – August
Open Monday – Sunday, 10.00–17.50
Closed on Good Friday and 24–26 December
Admission: £10.00 (£8.00 concessions)

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