Picasso, Stalin, Beria

(12.-14.12.2022) The arresting of Lavrentiy Beria in the summer of 1953 was a signal, also for Pablo Picasso. Whoever wants to focus on the Picasso prior to the revelations on Stalin in 1956, and this is necessary to understand Picasso in 1956 and to understand his reactions and statements in 1956, has to look into the years 1953-1955, but has also to avoid the risk of focussing too much on the notorious affair of Picasso’s portrait of Stalin.
Relevant here is what happened after that affair, after the arresting of Beria, when, step by step, it was becoming more clear to everyone in the scene of French communists, that revelations on Stalin were to follow, and that it was not only about ›violations of Socialist legality‹ for which Beria could be held responsible, but about much more: about crimes of historic and systematic dimension during the Stalinist period. And we will give a sketchy account here of these years, and of how Picasso – as well as his entourage – reacted to revelations before the actual revelations of 1956 (which, as has to be added, not yet revealed all dimensions of historic criminality in the Stalinist period, but only some).

Selected Literature:
Pierre Daix, J’ai cru au matin, Paris 1976;
Pierre Daix, Tout mon temps. Révisions de ma mémoire, Paris 2001;
Pierre Daix, Avec Elsa Triolet. 1945-1971, Paris 2010;
Viktor Jerofejew [Viktor Yerofeyev], Der gute Stalin, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18.10.1997, No. 242, p. B1

(Louis Aragon with Elsa Triolet
(picture: Pierre Seghers)

(Picture: Argentina)

One) Picasso and his Circle

A brief sketch is needed here of Picasso’s entourage, his circle of friends and acquaintances, in 1953, in the summer, when Lavrentiy Beria was arrested.
Picasso’s relationship with Françoise Gilot, as is well, perhaps all-too-well known, was ending, and we see Picasso, at Vallauris, alone, but also in the middle of his entourage, his inner circle of friends, bathing, working, discussing. An inner circle that was rather small then.
From the perspective of journalist and writer Pierre Daix, who was to become also one of Picasso’s biographers, but then was a newcomer in the circle of Picasso, there was poet Jacques Prévert, and there were Hélène Parmelin and Édouard Pignon, both communists, an admired couple, he a painter, she a writer-journalist, and later bound in long-term frienship with the couple of Pablo Picasso/Jacqueline Roque (a sort of friendship between these two couples; in which, it has to be said, Jacqueline was the only one who was not a communist).
In the background we see another – rather legendary – couple, which, however, was not part of Picasso’s actual circle of friends, but had an extraordinary standing within the scenery of French communism: Elsa Triolet and Louis Aragon, both writers, the communist glamour couple, and particularly he, Aragon, a walking advertisment to the French Communist Party, as was Picasso. Both were siding, as one has to know, with Françoise, in her break-up with Picasso, which, of course, made the relation Aragon-Picasso even more tense than it already was, due to other reasons.
In this scenery Pierre Daix, the relatively young Pierre Daix, 31 years old, who was also to become the historian of the scenery later, could act as an intermediary and informer to Picasso, because Daix worked, as a journalist, under Aragon, and had also good informations from Elsa Triolet, and also as to what was happening in the Soviet Union, where she had a sister. And now, here at Vallauris, where Pierre Daix was paying a visit to Picasso and was alone with him, he was reading in the newspaper, with Picasso, that Lavrentiy Beria had been arrested.

Two) Seeing It Coming

When being asked, in the summer of 1956, after the revelations on Stalin, how his friend, poet Paul Éluard would have reacted to all that one now knew, Picasso made the cryptic statement that Éluard would have said that one had seen this coming since long. This was an absurd statement, given the fact that Éluard had been the most ardent and most naive admirer of Stalin, and had died in 1952, before Stalin had died in 1953. But seen in the light of what happened in 1953 and 1954, the statement was not that absurd, apart from the fact that Éluard had not been there anymore, around Picasso, but, indeed, in hindsight, one had seen this coming, and if Éluard had been there, he would have had to face the irritating signs – with Pablo Picasso. And Pierre Daix, to his lifelong shock, since he had been a denier of the Gulag, got the first informations on people returning from the Gulag to their homes, in the fall of 1953 – from Elsa Triolet. Which was a particularly early date, since the Gulag was, among other things, the one thing that Khrushchev was to spare in 1956, in his ›Secret Speech‹ on Stalin. How much Daix told Picasso, however, is not clear at all. What we do know are the statements by Picasso that Daix reported later, in his two memoirs of 1976 and 2001, respectively, as well as in many other writings (on himself, as well as on Picasso).

Reading about the arresting of Beria in the summer of 1953, as it seems, had triggered Picasso to review what he had known about the trials of Moscow, before and after World War II.
In 1954, it already was the question of how much Stalin had known, of what had happened under Stalin. And further signs had triggered Picasso asking, if, soon, his portrait of Stalin, might be judged as being too nice. Which does mean that Picasso did see it coming; it, further attacks on Stalin that is, because he was aware of the fact that Stalin might have been much worse than one knew now, in 1954.
In 1955, Picasso, who was reflecting on politics in terms of reflecting on his representation of Stalin, which has, of course, some logic, seems to have said that the ›old Stalin‹ did only exist in representations of the Stalinist painters, which could be interpreted as saying that the stereotypical depicting of Stalin as old Uncle Stalin was a construction, a lie, an emblem of propaganda, and had little to do with actual reality, and that he was glad to have depicted Stalin after a photograph of 1904 (which happened perhaps only by chance). It had been Pierre Daix, who had provided Picasso with photographs of Stalin, when the painter had been asked to contribute a drawing to a memorial issue of the Les Lettres françaises journal, led by Aragon, but runned by Daix, who had plundered the archives of the communist newspaper that he had led before, but which had finished to exist.
It perhaps has to be added to this sketch of Picasso seeing it coming, that the artist, in 1955, created one of his most popular drawings, his representation of Don Quixote, which resulted from the atmosphere of these years when, privately, everything had to be build anew (with Jacqueline, from 1954 on), and politically, as to the basic political allegiance, everything got questioned, more and more intensely, more and more fundamentally. An emblematic rendering of Don Quixote, a reflection on idealism as well as on pragmatism, in life as in politics, was a product of, could result from this atmosphere, when Picasso had settled, with Jacqueline, at villa La Californie (which she seems to have found, for him, for them, with him), and this also after Olga, his wife, had died in 1955. Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque married in 1961.

(Picture: kunstfreunde.koeln; film by Lene Berg)

Three) Had Beria Seen Picasso’s Portrait of Stalin?

Lavrentiy Beria is a historic felon of the category that, due to popular culture, perhaps, might appear as larger than life. But it is rather the other way round: popular culture, culture in general, does depict these felons rathers as being too harmless. The historical truth, if taken into consideration in all of its scope, is usually making one rather speechless, and this again, might have the effect of focussing too much on a few individuals, certainly outstanding in sheer negativity, but always part of a bigger network, system, culture of violence, or whatever might be the name of it. Stalin had his henchmen; Beria was one of them (also a rapist, in all likelihood), but there were many henchmen (and, as one does know, also a few women among them).
Did Pablo Picasso and Beria live in the same world? It might appear that, no. But there is a reason to see them as inhabiting one and the same world, if, certainly, worlds apart, and the reason is simply that Picassos’s portrait of Stalin might have been known in the Soviet Union. It does create a reality effect – an effect that one, rather suddenly, might make one realize that these historic individuals inhabited indeed one and the same (communist) world –, if we read in an autobiographical memory written by writer Viktor Yerofeyev that Beria, apparently, had seen Picasso’s portrait of Stalin. »Beria had understood it as a caricature«, Yerofeyev is writing (Jerofejew 1997), and the problem was that, apparently, a cleaning woman, in truth an agent, had found the portrait in the bureau of Viktor Yerofeyev’s father, who was working in the Kremlin (for Molotov) then. And was summoned back to Moscov, from a vacation in the South.
I am not completely sure, if, here, the writer’s memory can be regarded as being completely accurate and reliable, and it deserves a checking, if it, indeed, could be true: Stalin had died early in 1953 (which saved, as Yerofeyev says, his father from the Gulag), and Picasso provided his portrait of Stalin immediately after that. Beria was arrested in the summer. If the episode is true, it must have happened inbetween these two dates, and it seems possible that Les Lettres françaises, a communist journal, was available in the Soviet Union, or a postcard with the picture on it, as the writer says. But was it indeed the portrait? Or Picassos’s, earlier, ›Toast on Stalin‹? Because Yerofeyev speaks of a jubilee portrait, and this Picasso never did. Only an (actually unmotivated) depiction of the young Stalin of 1904, for a memorial issue of Les Lettres françaises (note the pentimenti, indicating also carelessness). But it might be that Yerofeyev only confuses ›jubilee‹ with ›memory of Stalin‹. And the whole episode can be true. And this would mean that Beria might indeed have seen the portrait and thought of it as a caricature. Whatever Beria really might have thought (on Stalin). As a matter of fact he saw himself as the man that was to follow Stalin, but was mistaken. Other Stalinist criminals, and they all were, outsmarted him. Beria got arrested in the summer, as Picasso read, as we have seen, in the newspaper at Vallauris. And Khrushchev, after a period of a sort of collective leadership, was to follow Stalin as the leader; as the Khrushchev that was to give the ›Secret Speech‹ on Stalin’s crimes in 1956, but had not devised alone that such speech had to be given, since it was a complex maneuver, involving the whole leadership.

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