>>> "James Heartfield"
The NYT quotes a Cooper Union spokesperson saying "Picasso's drawing of
Stalin was viewed as unflattering and led to his expulsion from the
party." but I do not think that is the case. He continued to support the
party - sadly - for the rest of his life, and in 1962 was awarded the
Lenin Peace Prize. Great portrait, though.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/oct/21/books.guardianreview2
^^^^ Comrade Picasso was as wise in party politics as he was brilliant in his art.
Charles
But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso’s interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: “I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. … But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.”[
Political views
Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea, 1951 Picasso remained neutral during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Some of his contemporaries felt that his pacifism had more to do with cowardice than principle. An article in The New Yorker called him “a coward, who sat out two world wars while his friends were suffering and dying”.[9] As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either World War. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Francisco Franco and fascists through his art, he did not take up arms against them. He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. In 1944 Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended an international peace conference in Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government.[10] But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso’s interest in communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. In a 1945 interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso stated: “I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting. … But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in a special way to show my politics.”[11] He was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States[12] in the Korean civil war and he depicted it in Massacre in Korea. In 1962, he received the International Lenin Peace Prize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso
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