Murals from the Party

Of the world's leading artists, a surprising number wear the Communist label in varying shades of red. In Mexico, Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros are all-weather Communists; France's Fernand Leger often parrots the party line; so does Italy's Renato Guttuso. Last week two of modern art's foremost painters, both avowed Communists, were displaying their latest approach to an age-old theme: war and peace.

As the climax of a big retrospective show in Rome, Spain's leathery, little Pablo Picasso produced two huge (32 ft. by 16 ft.) panels (opposite), painted for his own abandoned, 14th century chapel in Vallauris on the French Riviera. Picasso's War shows a team of horses pulling a hearse through seas of blood. Atop the carriage sits a monster with a pack full of corpses; his snorting horses trample the world's culture, and in his wake float evil, lobster-sized germs. At bottom, two suppliant hands show mankind's futile protest against the horrors of modern war. Standing alone is the Communist version of mankind's protector: a heroic Red peace partisan, with a peace dove shield. The other panel is Picasso's personal dream of peace, where anything is possible. Picasso's trees bear golden fruit, even small children can work a plow, and a benevolent sun wears a festive dress. There are birds in fish bowls suspended in the sky, fish in canary cages on the ground.

Brazil's Candido Portinari takes a more traditional approach to the subject. His sketch for the first of two 46-ft.-high murals for U.N.'s Manhattan headquarters (opposite) is a prism through which he sees war as a curse on all mankind. Instead of germs and peace doves, Portinari shows the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, dashing headlong on a mad, zigzag course through humanity. Hyenas roam his shattered world and lines of sobbing mothers bend in prayer for their lost sons.

In Rome, Picasso's War and Peace made a big hit with both critics and public, and Italy's Communist press found plenty in the symbol-studded murals to cheer about. Trumpeted Rome's L'Unit`a: "Facile prophets have declared that Picasso doesn't give a hoot for ideological content. But Picasso has again shamed and belied them." Party-liners are not likely to say the same of Portinari, who seems to be drifting out of the Communist orbit. His murals have "no party intention," he explains. "They are the point of view of mankind."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.