The Art Newspaper – In the first week of January 1937, six months into the Spanish Civil War, Josep Renau, Republican Spain’s dynamic young director of Bellas Artes, approached Picasso to commission a large work of art for the Spanish Republic Pavilion in the forthcoming Exposition Internationale des Arts in Paris. It would hang pride of place. As the world’s most famous artist, and as the director of the Prado museum in absentia on a salary of 15,000 pesetas per annum, Picasso was pressured to produce a powerful propaganda piece to highlight the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. – read more
