Neither collaborator nor resistant. Picasso lived the Nazi occupation of Paris by painting, from the arms of Dora Maar to those of Marie-Therese Walter (and then to those of Françoise Gilot). Maurice de Vlaminck, complacent to the invader, accused him in a magazine of taking "the painting to a dead end." But the Gestapo did not bother him and Ernst Jünger visited him. He was forbidden to exhibit but not paint.
That is what this exhibition opens today in Grenoble. It is the first in France, and perhaps in the world, limited to the work of Spanish genius between 1939 and 1945. 137 works are exhibited. "Picasso was not a hero or a superman, but he was a genius, yes," says the director of the Grenoble Museum and curator of the show, Guy Tosatto. If I had to define in a word the situation of Picasso during those years I would use "ambiguity". That is why he has taken from Conrad the title, In the Heart of Darkness.
The author of Guernica , then in full triumphant tour of the US, "did not want to take risks" but also "did not yield to force or terror" as he confessed to Gilot after attending a funeral for his Jewish friend Max Jacob, who died in a internment camp It suited him to be "discreet," as one of his many biographers, Gilles Plazy, says.
Picasso welcomes us with his eyes like headlights and this quote: "I have not painted the war because I am not that kind of painter who goes, like the photographer, behind a subject. But without a doubt the war is in my paintings . " It corresponds to an article by Peter D. Whitney published in The San Francisco Chronicle on September 3, 44, eight days after the Liberation of Paris. The title is masterful: "Picasso is alive. The artist has not been a traitor to his painting or his country."
However, the museum appointment is not complete. Picasso's statement ended like this: "Maybe, in a while, a historian will show that my painting has changed due to the influence of war. But I don't know it myself."
We transfer the matter to Sophie Bernard, chief curator of the collections of modern and contemporary art at the Grenoble Museum. "Picasso speaks of war without representing it. All his work of this period breathes and transpires war. His color palette darkens . " He ends up with the appointment of Michel Leiris, writer and friend of the painter: "A torn painting corresponds to a torn era".
The easiest is to follow the chronological path. We are in 1939. "When the Germans invade Poland, forcing France and Britain to declare war on them, Picasso, Dora Maar and Sabartès take to the road , in the Hispanic Switzerland that drives the driver Marcel," writes Gilles Plazy. "Towards Royan, far from a possible front. Why Royan? Because Marie-Therèse Walter has spent the summer with Maya. Dora knows this flirtatious seaside resort because she summoned several times with her mother. You can believe it is a good place to wait for the end of the war. "
The two rivals, Dora and Marie-Therèse, "unable to ignore their presence, do their best not to meet." Several portraits of Dora Maar, the painter who immortalized the creative process of Guernica receive us. Picasso did not stop painting his lover during the entire contest and it is significant how the dark shades gradually dominate his palette and how the head of his model, increasingly tormented, embodies the pain.
We are not there yet. The Bust of a woman with a hat , of "when the couple is at the beginning of their relationship", represents "a sophisticated flirt and her little hat is the most provocative emblem of her colorful elegance." In 1939 Picasso has lost his mother and the war is coming. Picasso's intuition takes the form of a cat with a bird trapped by its teeth. The animal has sharp claws and ... a human mask.
Grenoble's exhibition is completed with fifty documents. In the first showcase we can see the telegram that Alfred Barr, the founder of MOMA, sent to Picasso on December 15, 39: "Colossal success exhibition. Stop. 60,000 visitors surpassing exhibition. Van Gogh. Stop. As war prevents return of his paintings I await your consent to its inclusion tour triumphant major cultural centers United States. Stop " .
He had it and the tour was a resounding success. With the Guernica as a bow mask. And that has its consequences. Pierre Daix explains: "Because of the 'Guernica', Picasso has become a living symbol of intellectual resistance to the Nazis. He knows it. They have forbidden him to expose and commits himself to true inner exile."
Inner Exile Not only does Picasso's biographer use this expression. The director of the Grenoble center adds: "Internal exile under surveillance. He is locked in the Rive Gauche." Because Picasso and family at large have returned to the capital. They will spend the war there.
Dora Maar's portraits are increasingly distorted. The bars of a chair and the beams of his apartment become the bars of a prison. Soon the lover will have the head of Picasso's dog.
We are in 1941. The Germans stroll through the cafés of Paris as conquerors. Shortly before, Malaga has tried to naturalize French. And failed. But he won't tell anyone. Breton, Masson and Max Ernst have gone to America.
In 42, the Reich seems to last a thousand years. The Soviets are still on the defensive and the western front is a chimera. Life hardens in Paris. In June Vlaminck, a youth friend who does not believe that the occupation is a bad thing, publishes this in Comedy : "Pablo Picasso is guilty of having led a deadly dead end to French painting, in an indescribable confusion. From 1900 to 1930 it has led to denial, helplessness, death. "
Derain, Vlaminck himself, Van Dongen and other notables and academics go on a trip organized by Berlin to celebrate the German-German collaboration. In Paris a new museum of modern art opens, without Picasso. And 9,000 Jews are deported with the collaboration of the French authorities.
Arno Breker, official sculptor of Nazi Germany exhibits at the Orangerie. He boasts that he asked the Gestapo to leave Picasso alone . Cocteau says he asked Breker.
In the same summer of 42, July 22, Ernst Jünger writes in his diary his impressions of a visit to the painter. The author of Marble Cliffs is in Paris with commander badges. A cordial encounter Write down this Picasso phrase about the war: "The two of us, sitting here, would negotiate peace this afternoon. By nightfall people could turn on the lights." ( Radiation . Ed. Tusquets).
Between this protection of the most enlightened Germans and the public attack of Vlaminck lives Picasso. Your answer will be two major works.
Alborada is a stunning picture. The woman lying on a couch seems tortured, is thin, the gloomy atmosphere reminds of a cell. Next to him a blue and melancholic musician with a mandolin without strings. "The title, ironic, was given by Louis Aragon.
When Picasso visited the exhibition of Breker in the Orangerie, with his sculptures of heroic warriors he came up with the idea of making a sculpture that would give him the replica.It will be the man of the ram modeled in plaster on a single day in March 43. Reina Sofía de Madrid is the original plaster. A bronze is exhibited in Grenoble. A Good Shepherd would be said ... if the author himself had not denied it. That reference, its unfinished appearance, the animal's tenderness in arms make this sculpture a symbol of humanist resistance to the Nazi yoke.
Little by little things get better. Liberation is coming. And Picasso has met a young woman in her twenties (he is already over 60) who will eventually replace Dora Maar after a 'triangular' time. His name is Françoise Gilot. She will make this confidence, after the funeral by Max Jacobs. "I don't feel like taking risks but I'm not willing to give in to force or terror."
The Liberation, August 44. Ernest Hemingway goes to see him and as he does not find him leaves a box of grenades. Robert Capa photographs him, the soldiers want to meet him and Gilot tells that people sleep on the stairs to see him.
L'Humanité announces on the cover that the painter has joined the Communist Party. Actually, in the party they abominate abstract art and Spanish is in any case an anarchist. But the imposture suits both of them.
I leave the conclusion to Guy Tosatto and Susanne Gaenshimer who directs the German art gallery where the exhibition will travel next year: "During the War, Picasso was not part of the Resistance and never - with the exception of Guernica interpreted the dramas that were produced around him, but the effort to continue his work, despite the attacks, affirms a humanist resistance against the oppressor and, in the heart of darkness, spreading a message of hope. "
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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