In 1944 , Picasso joined the French Communist Party , attended the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Poland , and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government . Party criticism in 1953 of his portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso 's interest in Soviet politics , though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death . His dealer , D-H . Kahnweiler , a socialist , termed Picasso 's communism " sentimental " rather than political , saying " He has never read a line of Karl Marx , nor of Engels of course . " 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 . " His commitment to communism , common among continental intellectuals and artists at the time , has long been the subject of some controversy ; a notable demonstration thereof was a quote commonly attributed to Salvador Dalí ( with whom Picasso had a rather strained relationship ) : In the late 1940s , his old friend the surrealist poet and Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist André Breton was more blunt ; refusing to shake hands with Picasso , he told him : " I do n't approve of your joining the Communist Party nor with the stand you have taken concerning the purges of the intellectuals after the Liberation " . Picasso was against the intervention of the United Nations and the United States in the Korean War and he depicted it in '' Massacre in Korea '' . The art critic Kirsten Hoving Keen says that it is " inspired by reports of American atrocities " and considers it one of Picasso 's communist works
World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace
World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace
Pablo Picasso