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

Abstract

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.

1. Tête de Femme

Picasso was continually reminded in 1942 that everyone in Paris was vulnerable to the risks of the Occupation as the German and Vichy governments took increased action against anyone who dared to challenge their authority. However, this did not stop resistance groups from becoming even more active, some of which included Picasso’s acquaintances. Attacks against the occupiers and retaliation against the attackers—or, more frequently, against innocent hostages—were ongoing. Repeated bombings by the allies further increased tensions on both sides. Art for Picasso during this period equally served as a form of defiance. It began with the knowledge that everything was fading: bodies were weakened, names were being eroded, civilization appeared to be disappearing into dust. Every mark made—on canvas or on paper—was made aware of its own impermanence. Art could not pretend otherwise. It was born already haunted. And yet, to make art at all was an act of refusal. Even when he knew his work could decay, be forgotten, or destroyed, the act of making persisted. That persistence was a form of defiance. Art defied death not by defeating it, but by delaying its silence. Art turned mortality into dialogue rather than an end in itself. Doing so forced art to stand in tension—aware that nothing lasted, but refusing to say nothing because of it.

Picasso’s reaction to the threat of death in the early 1940s—especially during Nazi-occupied Paris—was complex, defiant, and deeply psychological rather than openly heroic. Even though he was a foreigner in France, politically suspect, and thus technically in danger, Picasso refused to leave Paris during the German Occupation. He lived quietly but stubbornly in his studio. This choice alone was a kind of resistance: staying alive, staying visible, and continuing to work under a regime that labeled his art “degenerate”. Instead of painting explicit war scenes, Picasso turned inward. The threat of death shows up as symbols, distortions, and claustrophobic still lifes, not battlefield imagery. Common motifs were skulls, dead animals, especially sheep and bones, cramped interiors with heavy shadows, and aggressive, distorted figures, especially women, as seen in her portrait Dora Maar [1]. These works feel tense, airless, and grim—death is everywhere, but rarely named outright. Picasso’s palette also grew muted and harsh. Forms became jagged, thick, and heavy. The paintings suggest anxiety and confinement, as well as a preoccupation with mortality. Instead of despair, though, there is a sense of gritted survival—a refusal to be silenced. During the war years (especially 1941–1943), Picasso also wrote surreal, violent, fragmentary poetry. The poems are chaotic, filled with bodily imagery, cruelty, and decay. This suggests that the pressure of living under constant threat pushed him beyond visual art as a release valve. Art was seen by Picasso as survival, not escape. He did not romanticize death or martyrdom. His response was to keep working and to transform his fear into form, letting art absorb what could not be spoken openly.

In the gouache Tête de femme [2], Dora Maar’s mysteriously intense but inscrutably impassive visage seemed to reflect the ominous and troubled mood during these increasingly violent years. In addition to expressing his own inner feelings and despair at the horrible situation he was in, this highly subjective view of Maar also mirrored the feelings of the general populace, who had been devastated by the horrors of war. He found in this enigmatic muse a model who somehow, on some deep and intense level, suited the gloomy atmosphere of the times, and she became the primary intercessor through which he could reflect on current events through the numerous distortions and transformations he subjected her features to. She became a global, eternal representation of stoicism, defiance, and resistance in the face of enormous brutality, embodying the severity of the war and transcending the particular moment the image was created. As Daix wrote: “Through these attacks on the human face … the painter [was] constrained to protest the inhumanity of each day and show himself stronger than the enemy … [These women] seem to have been surprised in prison, thrown onto the canvas with heavy brush strokes, tremulous and hurried. Nonetheless they hold together with that extraordinary sense of composition which captures things at the point of dissolution and draws heightened strength from imbalance denied” (Daix 1993, p. 268). She looks outward with a resigned, wide-eyed expression against a dark backdrop, surrounded by a menacing sense of sorrow.

Accusations, denunciations, and self-justifications continued to feed the gloomy political climate. About the Occupation and its effects, Picasso remarked despairingly to Cocteau: “You’ll see. Everything will go from bad to worse. It’s all broken in us” (Caws 2000, p. 162). In the poem expressément nue, written on 23 February, he had included references to despair, also reflected in some of the nude paintings of Dora during this period, immersed in a tomb-like, gray environment: “distinctly naked … ice cold feet glued to the fire of painted perfumes … muse of a thousand disguises … one hand detaches itself from the arms lays its lips on the bottom of the arcs of ribbons with thousands of irritated colors … the ice cold breast … the mouse-gray painting … the sighs and indulgences of the wall hanging on the mirrors’ mirages” (Rothenberg and Joris 2004, pp. 251–52). Unlike other well-known individuals who had chosen to live in exile—either abroad, like Fernand Léger and the surrealist group, or domestically, like Braque in Varengeville, Matisse in Nice, Bonnard in Le Cannet, etc.—he had chosen to stay in Paris. Picasso, who never shied away from drama, found fresh avenues for expression during the Occupation—living material that could be given human form. One must not forget, however, that by this time, Picasso had attained a universal stature, and the German authorities refused to be openly identified as being hostile to the cultural elite.

On 5 March, he made another drawing of Dora: Femme assise [3]. Despite Picasso’s intentional facial deformities, the features are unquestionably hers. These contribute to a sense of unease that is also eloquently conveyed by her position and the strange shape of the throne-like chair she is seated on. Maar was the ideal medium for his immersion into the escalating unrest in Paris. The clear tension between the couple is conveyed by the image of the sitter, seemingly twisted in her rigid position on the chair, which functions as a kind of torture tool. There is a depressing sense of isolation in this work and others. The surrounding architecture is always gloomy and restrictive. The palette is typically reduced to a sensually devoid range of browns, ochers, or grays, and its low lighting gives the images a dying, nocturnal feel.

Two days earlier, the RAF had begun bombing raids on the Renault factory in Boulougne-Ballancourt, in the industrial districts of Paris, killing almost 600 people (Nash 1998, p. 218; Drake 2015, p. 237). Both German novelist Ernst Jöller and French writer Jean Galtier-Boissière wrote about the horrific incident in their diaries. From the Pont Neuf, which was located near Picasso’s studio at No. 7, rue des Grands-Augustins, many Parisians had watched in horror. The home of his dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, now in exile, had been damaged (Bernard 2019b, p. 162). About one week later, he wrote the poem gantée de fleurs, which includes very evocative images: “ironically burnt stretched painted stoically with golden nails naked in her crumpled dress set fire by a thousand lamps column of marble open to the blows of the fan bent on beams of jasmine … flames of bugles rattling furiously their silks … thirty six thousand candles trembling in the windows” (Rothenberg and Joris 2004, pp. 252–53). These could be seen as allusions to the bombing raids, which would have rocked the very beams of structures with their flame and light bursts, fires and columns of smoke (Goggin 1985, p. 163).

2. Nature Morte au Crâne de Bœuf

Juli González, his lifelong partner and friend, passed away at Arcueil, outside of Paris, on 27 March (Cabanne 1979, p. 339; Gohr 1988, p. 12; Daix 1993, p. 270; Ullmann 1993, p. 273; Dagen 2009, p. 489). He had fled to France following the Civil War, just like many other Spanish Loyalist Republicans. His daughter, who had wed anti-Nazi Hans Hartung, an artist on the Gestapo’s most wanted list, was forced to live apart from him. Family and relatives of the deceased were unable to leave the unoccupied south for the funeral following the division of the country into two zones after the Occupation. Among the few people present at the local parish church were Picasso and Zervos, as well as the flamenco dancer Felix Fernández and the sculptor Apel.les Fenosa. The artist would confess to them that he was extremely disturbed by the service. A few days later, he mysteriously remarked to Fenosa: “I am the one who killed him”, perhaps meaning that his artistic fame had overshadowed Gonzalez’s (Cabanne 1979, p. 340; Goggin 1985, p. 164; Nash 1998, p. 218; Ocaña 2004, p. 267; Daemgen 2005, p. 34; Mahler 2015, p. 187).

The large painting known as Nature morte au crâne de bœuf [4] would be painted on 5 April, a clear response to the sculptor’s death. The vivid colors in the background are obviously influenced by the stained-glass windows of the modest Romanesque church where the ceremonies had taken place, and the obviously symbolic bull skull shown in the picture is resting in what looks to be a coffin (McCully 1994, p. 220; Bernard 2019b, p. 162). He also wrote il ne fut pas inutile, recording his distress over his friend’s death. Images that would subsequently appear in other paintings were hinted to in the poem: “a night-light obscuring the gnawed rim of the dish the interminable chain of peplums stirred silently by the moon the smell so violent of the deep violet tone spread over the apple green and the dew moistening with rose the lemon calming until completely stifled the bitter orange music thrusting its hot sighs into the indulgent open ear of the yellow ocher” (Rothenberg and Joris 2004, p. 255).

At this time, Picasso also found a dismounted bicycle, from which he made the assembly Tête de taureau [5] as a memorial to the deceased sculptor. In the context of the Occupation, the use of bicycle parts to create the sculpture had added importance. Metro stations were frequently closing, sometimes for security reasons but also due to staff shortages, a lack of replacement parts, or the sporadic supply of electricity. As a result, the few trains that operated were sometimes crammed with Germans and Parisians, creating an intimacy that neither group desired. Although their owners suffered from a shortage of tire rubber and oil, bicycles were more necessary than ever, and therefore prevalent as there were fewer motorized vehicles, including public buses, on the road (Rosbottom 2014, p. 294).

Throughout the month, Picasso painted six more portraits of a dramatic bull skull on a table in front of a closed window covered with funeral hangings as a further tribute to his deceased friend González (Léal et al. 2000, pp. 343–47). Walther writes: “The most important element of his cubist pictures … used to be the contrast between an everyday subject and the destruction of the form that carried it. Now, however, the destruction had been doubled. Destroyed form, a typical feature of Picasso’s art, now also had to carry the ideas of destruction, fragmentation and confusion” (Walther 1993, pp. 70–72). The Spaniard had painted a similar terrifying bull head in Nature morte: tête de taureau [6] a few years prior, deeply impacted by the loss of his mother. His extreme anguish at not being able to attend her funeral was then reflected in the deformed skull, which was rendered expressionistic by the play of full and empty ravenous teeth, gaping mouth, and hollow orbits. As a memento mori, the 1942 artworks were just as potent. The cross frame of the opening in the background of Nature morte au crâne de bœuf [7] gives the composition a terribly dramatic aspect. Here, the symbolism is once more one of death and sacrifice. These vanities serve the purpose of an exorcism more than any other; they are a meditation on death. One never tries to escape impermanence; instead, one lets art live inside it. The austerity of his work at the time was even reflected in the choice of the more condensed vertical format. Picasso gave the skull a distinctly voluminous form, emphasizing the black orbits. It appears as though González would have welded some of the muscles and ligaments. Consequently, the animal appears to have come back to life as a ghost to haunt the living even though it is obviously dead (Boggs 1992, p. 271).

General Schaumburg’s sanctions and restrictions became more severe in April as the number of attacks on Germans increased. In many of these images, the lack of light was noticeable, bringing to mind the dim light of curfews and blackouts during the period. The recurring violet hue in works such as Nature morte au crâne de bœuf [4] alludes to the opaque materials used as curtains to hide the light coming from inside the apartments (Spies 2011, p. 191). The presence of window covers is also clear in Nature morte au crâne de bœuf [7]. Gerhard Heller, the German censor in Paris, reported that during a visit to Picasso’s studio, he told him: “I painted that at night, because at that moment I preferred the nighttime illumination to that of daylight … you must return at night to see” (Nash 1998, p. 30).

Dora’s agitated features in Buste de femme [8] revealed the impact of the uncertainty that reigned in the city. Picasso had painstakingly examined every facet of her. Her skin had the chilly, pale flesh tones of a cadaver, and her hair was stained with gray. Even though she is not crying, her big, dejected black eyes appear to be filled with tears, and her tiny, red lips are contorted into a moan. The bizarre, off-white background skillfully manipulates a number of opposing aspects to highlight the sitter’s anguish, thus grabbing the viewer’s attention. Similar features may be found in several engravings of Dora included in the book Non Vouloir by Georges Hugnet, published in Éditions Jeanne Bucher this month. Picasso dedicated one of them to Éluard, who like Hugnet, was to go underground in the Résistance that summer (Baldassari 2005, p. 248; Bernard 2019b, p. 162). The overall severity of the facial rendering in the canvas is enhanced by the fanciful headpiece. The jaunty hat perched on the sitter’s head somehow portrays the tremendous mood of instability that accompanied both the Occupation and Maar’s growing mental fragility. Looking away from the viewer to the right of the picture, the aggressive, incisive brushwork carves into the features the horrific evidence of having witnessed and endured too much in one so young. On Dora’s head, a similarly shaky hat seems to be balanced in Femme dans un fauteuil [9]. As the interconnecting planes of her face, head, and neck barely fit together in a complicated assemblage of finely counterbalanced weights and volumes, the accessory is used once more to highlight the perilous equilibrium that seems to keep her entire body together. Dora’s physique is sharply focused due to the dark, shadowy background, and her outward glance draws all of our attention to her. Her torso emerges in a maze of intersecting lines framed by the chair’s striking red armature, a delicate interplay of curves and angles that converge to form a fragmented, sculptural unit. Perhaps a reflection of Picasso’s own anxiousness, her joined hands give the impression that she is anxiously awaiting her terrible fate.

In paintings like Nature morte au crâne de taureau [10], the artist reiterated the feeling of cramped confinement by shrinking the area so that the floor, ceiling, and walls seem to converge. The painting portrays a subtle meditation on the tenuous balance of life and death, countering the gloom of its subject matter with the play of discordant, bright hues. Concentrating on the dynamic examination of the sculptural nature of the bull skull, he transformed its form into a complex interplay of angular, intersecting lines that appear to radiate outward into the studio space. The dense layering of thick, linear strokes served to further strengthen the image.

Picasso frequently used sharp angles and dramatic color schemes in his still lifes to convey terror during the Occupation. They became a significant remembrance of this terrible time and a poignant illustration of his art’s ability to transform commonplace materials. Nature morte au panier de fruits [11] was one of two striking canvases he painted in August—a time when the severity of the situation had become all too evident in the capital. In order to let the mood of the conflict seep into the straightforward arrangement of everyday items, he selected a stark army gray color scheme. An already discordant composition is intensified by the razor-sharp angular distortions. His flowers became resolutely angular constructions throughout these years, with vivid, signal-like colors and thick black outlines that prevented positive connection. The colors were mostly freed from their object-defining role, and they entered the grid structures as patches of blue-violet, vermilion, and brownish green. In another painting, Nature morte à la corbeille de fruits [12], the image was changed into a juxtaposition of linear structures by a few patches of bright red that added color to the black lattice (Ullmann 1993, p. 266). The focus is on how the things fit into the overall design rather than on them as separate components. It appears to indicate Picasso’s intention to focus on structural issues rather than the subject matter’s emotional or symbolic implications—a kind of avoidance.

A similar still life painted on 2 August, Nature morte au panier de fruits et aux fleurs [13], featured a pitcher or vase of grasses or wildflowers on the right and a basket of fruit on the left. Although the fruits depicted could never be considered appetizing—Steinberg describes them as “green pellets”—Daix suggests that they “speak longingly of harvests in that time of scarcity” (Goggin 1985, p. 209). There were undoubtedly shortages of all types in Paris, and good food was only available at exorbitant prices on the underground market. Fuel and coal were also scarce. Picasso, who had closed his apartment on the rue de la Boétie to be within easy walking distance of Dora, Marie-Thérèse, and Maya in order to avoid violating the stringent curfew regulations, could not find enough of it to heat the large rooms in his Grands-Augustins studio, where he had chosen to live and work for the duration. The woman in Buste de femme [14], painted the next day, has one of Picasso’s most violent or furious expressions during the Occupation. The basic pattern of the July heads is reflected in the reformulations of the face, which include a mouth on the left-twisted region of the face, eyes misaligned, and a snout-like nose projecting to the right. The tiny pupils in her eyes, the wrinkle on her brow, and the triangular mouth with clenched teeth all convey a violent expression. The intense rage that propelled the artist’s brush is suggested by the striations that were gouged into the paint.

The war had not yet reached the three-year mark, and things were not going well for the Allies. In fact, there was very little positive news available to alleviate the hopelessness of the large number of people confined to Nazi-occupied Europe. In order to conquer Egypt and take control of the Suez Canal, which served as Britain’s vital route to India and the Far East, German armored columns had been racing across North Africa. Picasso found it difficult to find the right mood to paint over the summer; he was like a caged lion, chain-smoking, roaming alone or with Kazbek, and, at most, meeting a few pals in any little bistros that Germans were unlikely to frequent. He no longer made frequent visits to any of the galleries he had previously frequented. The majority of the dealers he knew were Jewish, and several had been forcibly replaced in their own galleries by inexperienced front men who were best avoided because they were frequently nothing more than puppets for the occupiers and their allies.

In September, a labor conscription law—Service du travail obligatoire (STO)—was passed, requiring all fit males between 18 and 50 and single women from 21 to 35 to be available for work for two years in support of the Nazi war effort. Protest strikes and demonstrations followed. The policy also gave a new impulse to Résistance movements (Nash 1998, p. 218; Drake 2015, p. 251; Bernard 2019b, p. 162) and the appearance of underground papers like Les Lettres françaises, published by mimeograph (Goggin 1985, p. 217; Nash 1998, p. 220; Daemgen 2005, p. 34; Riding 2010, p. 274; Morris 2010, p. 230; Drake 2015, p. 311; Limousin et al. 2019, p. 143). Éluard was associated with it, thus bringing Picasso into contact with the staff. The paper informed readers that Jean Cassou, who had been removed from his position two years earlier, as Director of the Musée d’Art Moderne, had been arrested in Toulouse in the Free Zone, released, then detained again and sentenced to one year in prison. Thousands of foreigners heard a similar “knock of death” on their doors. Picasso himself did not know for sure if a supposedly innocent knock on his door could lead to a similar terrible fate. André-Louis Dubois relates an incident that involves an unexpected visit to the studio by “two men in green raincoats”. Dubois had been alerted by a phone call from Dora that Picasso might be in trouble. When he arrived at the courtyard, the two Gestapo men were leaving, but demanded to see his papers. Once inside, he found the artist smoking nervously, his expression impassive. A few canvases had been knocked over and some had tears in them. He explained: “They insulted me, called me a degenerate, a communist, a Jew. They kicked the paintings. They told me, ‘We’ll be back’” (van Hensbergen 2004, p. 139). While they did not immediately return, the Gestapo kept his studio under close surveillance. He had to put up with frequent unwelcome visits by officers who professed an interest in art, notwithstanding the official forbidden status of his work and the sanctions that had been levied against him.

Deportation came in waves in 1943. Jews were being persecuted, and French Communists were being imprisoned. Picasso’s well-known relationship with members of both factions had led to multiple instances of harassment by the Gestapo. This same month, gallerist Berthe Weill, an earlier promoter of the Spaniard’s art, was the target of anti-Semitic attacks. A long article in Cahier jaune criticized her for her “complete lack of aesthetic sense” (Bernard 2019b, p. 193). And yet, while he no longer exhibited with Weill, his works would appear from time to time at other Parisian galleries, for instance, at Galerie Charpentier for the exhibition “Les fleurs et les fruits depuis le Romantisme” (Limousin et al. 2019, p. 143). Despite the numerous limitations, some of his friends were also able to maintain a similar level of activity in both literary and political circles. Éluard and Aragon’s poetry as well as works by Paulhan, Sartre, Leiris, and Jacques Debû-Bridel were published by Claude Morgan in Les Lettres Françaises (Riding 2010, p. 275). As head of the Comité National des Écrivains for the northern zone, Éluard met in secret with Aragon, Elsa Triolet, and Georges Sadoul, members of the southern zone committee, at an apartment on Boulevard Morland to plan cooperative efforts against the occupiers (Cabanne 1979, p. 354).

3. L’homme au Mouton

On 9 March, Otto Freundlich (b. 1878), whom he had known throughout the Bateau-Lavoir years and who had been imprisoned at St.-Paul-de-Fenouillet and subsequently held at Drancy prior to deportation, was moved to the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp where he was killed upon arrival (Nash 1998, p. 221; Riding 2010, p. 175; Bernard 2019b, p. 194). Freundlich’s wife had informed Picasso about his arrest and imprisonment. It was around this time that he wrote the poem blanc bleu blanc, most likely in reaction to learning of his friend’s awful death. The use of many colors may allude to the artist who was regarded as an ancestor of abstraction: “white blue white yellow and rose white of an apple green turned pale … pink spangles the bronzed pink … the white flock of turquoises … a delicate lilac … the festoon of orange flowers” (Rothenberg and Joris 2004, p. 257). Mosaic, tapestry, and stained glass are just a few of the several techniques that fascinated and inspired Freundlich. As his work progressed, he was able to create a strong syntax that linked and energized the clusters of colored components. He had often examined the power tensions and balances created by geometric elements and chromatic variations.

Picasso withdrew into his studio, leaving behind the café culture that had defined his life for many years. He put himself ferociously into his work while enduring the dreadful environment that befell the city’s residents living under enemy rule: blackouts, the persistent threat of shelling, or brutality and death. “It was not a time for the creative man to fail, to shrink, to stop working”, he later explained (McCully 1981, p. 224). He added a potent allegorical significance to everyday settings by using a limited repertoire of objects, such as cups, pots, skulls, or food. These frequently dark pictures conveyed a sense of tension, anxiety, and melancholy. He was probably still thinking of his dead friend on 20 March as he wrote une table d’azur: “an old dressing-gown come down from heaven and transparent its one thousand and a hundred of stained glass windows bristling with all its feathers set alight … all day long silently resigned to all … the incommensurable stretched linens of the complicated unsewing machines in the shadows of the stars hung out to dry the thirsty music of the melancholy passages” (Rothenberg and Joris 2004, p. 258). Victimization is also at the heart of the drawings Mouton [15] and Mouton [16] from late March. The lamb shows up ready to be sacrificed, its legs bound. With this crucial addition, it was once again evident that his objectives were to symbolize near death and loss of freedom rather than any chance for redemption (Ullmann 1993, p. 355). Four days later, he made a series of martyred heads in India ink, among them Tête de femme [17]. These linear sketches are restricted to planar features with busts reduced to the bare minimum. The heads’ triangular shapes are evocative of the infamous Magen David, which French Jews had been compelled to wear since 29 May 1942.

In early April, there was a break in Picasso’s painting prompted primarily by new ideas on how to finally complete the sculpture L’homme au mouton [18]. He immediately set to work after asking a Spanish friend to buy him some modeling clay. He began molding the clay around an armature that stood seven feet tall (Daix 1993, p. 269; Ullmann 1993, p. 350; Müller 2002, p. 57; Baldassari 2006, p. 311)1. As he kept “building up” the figure, the armature was too light to support the weight of the clay, so he had to strengthen it (Cabanne 1979, p. 357; Goggin 1985, p. 214). Picasso would later tell Brassaï he completed the modeling in one session: “I did this statue in a single afternoon, but not until after months of reflection and I don’t know how many sketches. Paul Éluard was here. Marcel [his chauffeur] helped me … The statue began to stagger under the weight of the clay. It was dreadful! It was threatening to collapse at any moment. I had to do something, quickly. I enlisted Paul Éluard, to help Marcel. We took lengths of cord and lashed [it] to the beams. I decided to cast it in plaster immediately. And it was done that same afternoon” (Mahler 2015, pp. 188–89). There is a clear air of defiance in this work: again, not a rebellion against death, but a refusal to remain silent. During the summer, he completed another sculpture, Tête de mort [19] (started in 1941). With its wide eyes and high, rounded forehead, the shape resembles the artist’s own head. Even the left cheek’s larger concavity, which he deliberately captured in both covert and overt self-portraits, is visible here. The sculpture might therefore represent his rejection of death. Brassaï wonders about the origin of this “rolling block of stone, corroded and polished by rolling through the ages” (Goggin 1985, p. 301). It undoubtedly conveys the suffering of an artist for whom Max Jacob had foretold an impending death in the late 1940s. It is a dark mass resembling a cannon ball: “a line of life through his sixties, eight years of weakness and serious illness at the end of his life” (Tosatto et al. 2019, p. 188).

In order to provide the concentration system with detainees fit for employment, another convoy of deportees departed Compiègne on 26 June and headed for Buchenwald. Two days later, Picasso painted the oil on canvas Grand nu couché [20]. A massive odalisque (Dora) appears to be undergoing fossilization in a small room with blue walls and a low ceiling. Her bloated belly, languid breasts, malformed limbs, and sutured spine are all uncomfortable aspects of her picture. It is the Ancient Roman Callipyge Venus that is parodied here. Suffering is embodied by the swollen female nude. Like the hideous protagonists of his play Désir attrapé par la queue, she is a sister of misfortune with her confused expression and foolish smile. Maar’s tears are “the tears of humanity”, Richardson has said. We are witnessing “the agony of confinement, not only that of Picasso and Maar, but that of the whole world” (Berggruen 2002, p. 136). Unquestionably, the conflict demanded a tortured aesthetic and the disturbance of forcefully deconstructed nudity to correspond with the obscenity of the times. This enormous, dismembered body’s bestiality conveys destruction, grief, and the fall of humanism. It represents the transgressions and humiliations of a disdained humanity as a deviant being.

The oil La fenêtre rétrécie (de l’atelier) [21] speaks of the night that had fallen over Paris. One is acutely aware of being within the Grands-Augustins studio when looking at this work. The room can be identified by the ceiling beams. A faded Paris sky is visible through the black curtain that “slap on the cheek of the sky”—as he had written on 25 December 1939—overlooking a simple radiator which Jacques Prévert had said that “any other painter would have suppressed …, judging it ugly, vulgar, unsightly” (Bernard 2019a, pp. 32–33). The walls rising to the upper edge of the image obscure the view, which is already limited by the partially closed window, making it difficult to see the sky. The rust-brown and broad black contours of the radiator and rods, and hazy ocher tones of the interior match the house’s outside filthy gray walls, and even the small portion of visible sky has been painted a depressing shade of gray blue (Ullmann 1993, p. 258).

Picasso created a plethora of still lifes during this period, where a sense of cramped loneliness and ubiquitous anxiety persisted. Hitler’s theory held that there was no alternative to Aryan bodies in the army at the Eastern Front, therefore Germany continued to exploit France’s resources, particularly its food supply, even if it also relied heavily on French labor for its factories. Gestapo members stayed in their positions and were not called back to the Reich; in fact, it required more brutal control over a city that had become highly agitated, including more arrests, confiscations, torture, and executions (Rosbottom 2014, p. 305).

4. Nature Morte au Crâne et au Pot

On 9 August, Jewish painter Chaim Soutine (born 1893) had a perforated ulcer, so his friend Marie-Berthe Aurenche hurried him from his remote Champigny-sur-Vende house to Paris for an urgent operation. He had managed to escape from the clutches of the Vichy regime, but now sadly died soon after the rashed procedure (Cabanne 1979, p. 354; Goggin 1985, p. 297; Ullmann 1993, p. 279; Nash 1998, p. 222; Riding 2010, p. 87; Bernard 2019b, p. 196). Informed of this tragic event, Picasso painted the oil Tête de femme souriante [22], a mouthful of teeth signifying the grin of victorious death. Despite the danger of burying a Russian Jew, he disregarded the most basic security precaution and went to his friend’s funeral on 11 August at the Mont-Parnasse cemetery (Ullmann 1993, p. 279; Nash 1998, p. 222; Tosatto et al. 2019, p. 196). Two small paintings, Nature morte au crâne et au pot [23] and Nature morte au pot et au crane [24], executed in mid-August, definitively serve as a remembrance of Soutine’s death and a contemplation of his own mortality. The complimentary contrast between green and red/yellow highlights the compositions’ oppositional qualities and formal tensions (Ullmann 1993, p. 279). We are reminded of a prison cell, which is a fitting location for a sign of sacrifice, by the symbolism of the skull as a memento mori and the apparent severity and smallness of the area it occupies. He positioned a jug, which he had frequently used to allude to feminine sensuality in his work, next to the skull. In this instance, the vessel’s hue lacks the energy to be associated with life, and it is too solid to be deemed sensual. As Boggs indicates, it is as if the dignity of death and the spontaneity of life were confronting each other, making these paintings a proper source of meditation for someone placed in confinement (Boggs 1992, pp. 281–82).

Nearly 1000 detainees were transported to Buchenwald in a fresh mass deportation convoy in late September; they had all been imprisoned as a result of an increase in repressive tactics. These were men that were physically fit enough to dig the tunnels in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp; but the labor conditions were appalling, and many people would perish in the ensuing weeks and months. Around this time, Maar reappeared in several portraits. In the oil Tête de femme [25], her huge, black eyes captivate and challenge the viewer as they pierce the dazzling white background. Her passionate look and raven-colored hair set her apart from the tortured and deformed portrayals that had typified many of his portrayals of her. Voluminous waves of lush dark hair frame her long, oval face, which is depicted with a resounding fullness made up of opposing planes of light and shadow and aggressively drawn, softly curved brushstrokes. She looks at the viewer with intense solemnity, but there is still a sense of anxiety in her eyes. As Léal has written, with “a temperament prone to withdrawal, to introspection; the hollowness of the cheek is most likely a sign of the mind’s flight, a schizophrenic side” (Léal 1996, p. 395). Her wide-eyed gaze is desolate and dejected, fiercely but silently conveying her conflicting emotions to the artist, her lover, as she is depicted frontally with her mouth firmly closed.

After four years of accumulated deprivation, the severely cold winter of 1943–1944 was even more difficult to endure. During the Occupation, Paris did indeed experience a long, harsh night that left the city depressed and hopeless. To stay warm, writers and artists gathered in Saint-Germain-des-Prés businesses like the Café de Flore. In her memoir, Beauvoir painted a typical scene: “Slowly, over the course of the morning, the room filled up; by the cocktail hour, it was full. Picasso smiled at Dora Maar, who was holding a large dog; Léon-Paul Fargue remained silent, Jacques Prévert chatted; there were noisy debates at the tables of the movie directors who, since 1939, met there almost every day” (Riding 2010, p. 291). Although Sartre and Beauvoir lived in the Hôtel La Louisiane on the nearby rue de Seine, they wrote most of their works at the café.

After visiting Picasso’s apartment in December, André Malraux had joined the armed resistance alongside his half-brother Roland. He went as “Colonel Berger” when working with British spies in the Dordogne and made multiple covert trips to Paris (Riding 2010, p. 272). Resistance movements in the southern and northern areas had joined to form the Mouvement de libération nationale (MLN) (Bernard 2019b, p. 247). Probably in reaction to their growing organization, the Vichy regime enacted on 20 January a law imposing court-martial for the trial of anyone accused of “terrorist activities”. The government’s brutality was unrelenting. Those accused had no attorney, there was no judicial investigation (as was customary), and the death sentences were legally binding and had to be executed right away. Nearly 1000 people were arrested in Paris as a result of two significant operations in late January and early February.

5. Nature Morte au Gruyère

He learned in late February that his friend Robert Desnos, who had been living close to him on rue Guenegaud and had been able to maintain an open house in their attic with his wife Youki, had been arrested on 22 February and sent to a camp in Fresnes. He was later transferred to Camp Royallieu at Compiègne before being deported to Floha (Flossenbürg) in Saxony (Cabanne 1979, p. 357; Gohr 1988, p. 12; Daix 1993, p. 272; Monod-Fontaine 1994, p. 59; Baer 1998, p. 84; also Müller 2002, p. 57; Daemgen 2005, p. 34; Morris 2010, p. 230). While distributing covert pamphlets, a young child had been arrested and had disclosed Desnos’s identity, among other things. At the time, he had been working on an underground paper entitled, Les Nouveaux Taons. In her memoires, Youki would note how Maurice Toesca, who had assisted Picasso in renewing his carte d’identité d’etranger, would help her obtain information about her husband’s whereabouts. It is no coincidence that the artist should then execute several drawings of something that resembles once again a skull. They probably reflect his reaction to the news of his friend’s capture (Goggin 1985, pp. 338–39).

Two days later, another close friend, Max Jacob, was arrested at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire (Ullmann 1993, p. 213; Riding 2010, p. 183; Bernard 2019b, p. 246). Soon after his detention, he was sent to Drancy concentration camp, via Orleans (Cabanne 1979, p. 358; Daix 1993, p. 272; Monod-Fontaine 1994, p. 59; Bertrand-Dorléac 2008, p. 216; Bernard 2019b, p. 247; Limousin et al. 2019, p. 143)2. While on the train en route to Drancy, he wrote to Cocteau asking for help. Picasso hesitated whether he should include his signature in the missive, a surprising fact given the close relationship (some might even say sexual) the two had maintained during the Bateau-Lavoir years (Nash 1998, p. 223; Caws 2000, p. 168; Müller 2002, p. 57; Ocaña 2004, p. 268; Daemgen 2005, p. 34). His hesitation to intervene might have been due to the fact that Georges Prade, an infamous pétaniste, had told him that his signature on a request for his release might be counterproductive (Müller 2002, p. 57; Ocaña 2004, p. 268; Riding 2010, p. 183). In any case, Cocteau and Salmon still wrote a letter to the German ambassador, Otto Abetz, on Max’s behalf which was also signed by Picasso (Goggin 1985, pp. 339–40). Regardless, it did not succeed. The poet died in Drancy on 5 March (Cabanne 1979, p. 358; Monod-Fontaine 1994, p. 59; Nash 1998, p. 223; Caws 2000, p. 168; Daemgen 2005, p. 34; Dagen 2009, p. 489; Caruncho and Fàbregas 2017, p. 120; Bernard 2019b, p. 247)3. Although it is possible that news of his death did not arrive in Paris until several days later, the artist painted the oil Buste de femme [26] the same day of his passing. The background of this image makes one think of the notorious striped uniforms of concentration camps.

By 13 March, when he executed Nature morte au gruyere [27], Picasso most likely knew of Jacob’s passing by now, therefore this still life of commonplace items might as well have been a memorial to the poet’s passing. Parts that are illuminated are relocated to the dark area, while gray shadows are rotated to the light side. As a result, the image’s light and dark areas become confusedly entangled. One must point out that the items in Picasso’s still life compositions during the final years of the Occupation frequently took on anthropomorphic characteristics and developed human relationships with one another (Ullmann 1993, p. 272). Therefore, the coffeepot looks strikingly similar to Max in an old portrait wearing a long coat with a slight flare at the bottom and a top hat. He stood with his right hand at his waist with the elbow protruding, resembling a spout, and his left hand pressed against his hip, forming a curve that connected his arm to his torso like a handle (Goggin 1985, p. 343).

With Cocteau, Reverdy, Salmon, Braque, Éluard and Maar, Picasso attended a mass in Jacob’s memory at Saint-Roch on 18 March (Baldassari 2006, p. 311; Bernard 2019b, p. 246; Riding 2010, p. 183)4. The poet would also be present in effigy at the reading of Le désir attrapé par la queue at Michel and Louise Leiris’s apartment on 53bis, quai des Grands-Augustins, around the corner from Picasso’s studio. He displayed a 1915 portrait he had created of Max among the other visitors. Under Albert Camus’ direction, some of the best intellectuals of the Occupation were brought together to perform various roles. A hundred other people attended the performance, including Brassaï, Braque and his wife, Valentine Hugo, Lacan, Cécile Éluard (Paul’s daughter), Sabartés, Reverdy, Jean-Louis Barrault, Georges and Sylvia Bataille, Maurice Toesca, André-Louis Dubois, Lucienne and Armand Salacrou, Georges Limbour, Henri Michaux, and Marcel Mouloudji. The evening was described as an act of intellectual resistance by Pierre Daix (Cabanne 1979, p. 358; Fluegel 1980, p. 353; Goggin 1985, pp. 78, 344–45; Gohr 1988, p. 12; Daix 1993, p. 272; Seckel et al. 1994, p. 276; Monod-Fontaine 1994, p. 59; Nash 1998, p. 223; Caws 2000, p. 169; Förster 2001, p. 121; Müller 2002, p. 57; Ocaña 2004, p. 268; Daemgen 2005, p. 34; Baldassari 2005, p. 248; Baldassari 2006, p. 311; Cendoya et al. 2007, p. 327; Bertrand-Dorléac 2008, pp. 218–19; Dagen 2009, p. 489; Riding 2010, p. 185; Alvarez 2019, p. 33; Bernard 2019b, p. 246; Limousin et al. 2019, p. 143)5. Picasso, Maar, Sabartés and Marcel later traveled to Jacob’s funeral at Saint-Roch on 21 March (Nash 1998, p. 223; Förster 2001, p. 123; Bernard 2019b, p. 247).

By spring, the first reports of concentration camps and mass graves started appearing in the press. Picasso’s friend Lee Miller would be one of the first reporters to photograph the death camps. She stopped by the artist’s studio during a visit to Paris, and she might have discussed them with him (Bernard 2019b, p. 247). Around that time, he painted Tête de femme [28], which again depicted Dora. The artist exaggerated her features and evoked a sense of concern tied to the recent news, thus creating a psychologically powerful image. Her greatly admired beauty—flowing chestnut hair, light eyes, and a forceful nose—, now appeared warped. He even obscured the figure’s gender by shifting her long hair to the side and highlighting the skull-like head, making it almost appear as a self-portrait. As Baer has stated, “The artist always did his best painting only when he was in a crisis, whatever it was” (Baer 1998, p. 97).

Day and night, Allied bombing raids on Paris persisted. They hammered the suburbs of Vincennes and Noisy-le-Sec, Juvisy, on 18 April, demolishing workshops, rail hubs, locomotive sheds, etc. Over 450 citizens were killed and 370 seriously injured in Noisy-le-Sec, where nearly 3000 homes were damaged or destroyed. In Juvisy, there were 475 critical injuries and 125 fatalities (Drake 2015, pp. 359–60; Bernard 2019b, p. 249). Two days later, the marshalling yards at La Chapelle in the 18th district of Paris were struck by Allied aircraft during the night. Approximately 670 individuals were killed “off target”, primarily in cellars and buildings. An area of roughly 2.5 square miles was hit by more than 2000 bombs (Drake 2015, pp. 360–62). And on 21 April, Jünger reported that bombs had hit Saint Denis, and that hundreds had been killed. As the allies gained further ground on 25 April, Picasso had been painting “more and more like God or the Devil”, Éluard wrote to Penrose.

Executed at this time, the bleak and terrifying Femme en bleu [29] could depict Dora with a skeletal face and a depressing blue dress, effectively capturing the terrible destiny of the French people in general (Léal et al. 2000, pp. 350–53). For the painter, Maar had played this dual role of unique bravery and fear, completely connected but also completely irreconcilable. During the war years, she had stood in for women who were imprisoned, injured, disfigured, and debased. However, this personage in blue now rises as a symbol of fortitude and defiance in the calm monumentality of her position. Interestingly, this oil was one of Dora’s last appearances in the painter’s universe. On 6 June, the Allies made the historic landing in Normandy. Over the next few weeks, a million soldiers led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower would advance onto five beachheads. De Gaulle prepared to return to France as the invasion gradually advanced and the Germans withdrew. As the enemy attempted to thwart additional Allied assaults, swift transports and tanks moved through and around the capital (Rosbottom 2014, p. 310). The city would soon be liberated.

6. Conclusions

Picasso chose to stay in Paris when Nazi Germany occupied France (1940–1944). As a Spanish citizen and known modern artist, he was viewed with suspicion by the occupiers, and was forbidden to exhibit. He lived under constant shortages (food, heat, materials) and surveillance, but he was not arrested. Even without exhibitions, Picasso worked intensely. Dark, somber paintings, often featuring distorted figures, death skulls, and aggressive imagery, would reflect the fear, hunger, and violence he observed in the city. Picasso was also deeply affected by the death of some of his friends during this period, often as a consequence of their racial, social or political status. Their deaths personalized the war for Picasso. They reinforced themes already present in his art such as innocent suffering, dehumanization and moral outrage. In response, the Spaniard used his art as a form of meditation and defiance. To make art was an act of refusal. It defied violence and death not by defeating it, but by delaying its silence. In this way, art turned mortality into dialogue rather than a conclusion. It circled death, studied it, gave it form. This attention was a form of resistance in which art stood in tension—aware that nothing lasts, but unwilling to say nothing because of it.

In short, Picasso reacted to the threat of death in the early 1940s by staying in occupied Paris as a quiet act of defiance, filling his work with symbols of death, confinement, and tension; channeling fear into relentless creative production; and treating art as psychological resistance and survival.