Le Monde Magazine's Cover Article on Picasso Lauds the Painter's Communist Convictions and His Far Left Contacts

In his cover article on Pablo Picasso, Michel Guerrin manages to plunge us back into the 1950s love affair with communism, lauding the Communist painter to the heavens for his "generosity" with his "political gifts" for fellow communists, all the while conspicuously avoiding any mention (or study) of over half a century of history — for instance the 1990s opening of the Soviet archives and the disclosure of the Verona program, not to mention the tens of millions of citizens murdered under the likes of Stalin and Mao.

Thus we have the Rosenbergs as "martyrs of McCarthyism" while Michel Guerrin is in awe of Picasso's (communist) convictions and waxes poetic about his "political gifts" which form "another major chapter of the painter's generosity". Meanwhile, his support for a communist periodical is one "the most emotional aspects of his generosity" (the editor and the painter "go swimming together" and they "remain friends until Picasso's death"):

Les cadeaux politiques sont un autre gros chapitre de la générosité du peintre, qui est resté jusqu'à sa mort membre du Parti communiste. Il donne au Parti, à sa presse, au Mouvement pour la paix, dessine pour les époux Rosenberg, martyrs du maccartisme …

Le soutien de Picasso au journal communiste Le Patriote, à Nice, de 1957 à 1967, est un des aspects les plus émouvants de la générosité. … Il le fait par conviction communiste.