Pablo Picasso and the Threat of Death in the Early 1940s

During the German Occupation, Picasso reacted to the omnipresent threat of death and violence with defiant stoicism, artistic subversion, and a profound memorialization of its victims. Though his work was banned as “degenerate” by the Nazis, he remained in Paris, and chose to fight with his art rather than flee. Picasso was also personally affected by death during this time as he lost several close friends. Among them were the poet Max Jacob, who died in the Drancy concentration camp in 1944. He knew that his art was impacted by the horror around him, even if he did not paint the war directly. That same year, he declared, “I did not paint the war… but there is no doubt that the war is there in the pictures which I painted then.” The artist stripped away any hint of beauty in his wartime portraits and still lifes in favor of brutal, angular compositions. In all the jarring pictures he painted during this period, death is portrayed as a violent threat rather than a peaceful end to life.