La Colombe, Noir

This drawing was created as a preparatory sketch for his 1949 lithograph, The Dove. The Dove became a symbol for the Peace movement, and for the ideals of the Communist Party, after it was used to illustrate the poster of the World Peace Congress in Paris in April 1949. In the same month, Picasso named his fourth child ‘Paloma’, the Spanish word for ‘dove’. At the 1950 World Peace Congress in Sheffield Picasso made a brief speech recounting how his father had taught him to paint doves, which he concluded, ‘I stand for life against death; I stand for peace against war.