Picasso: denied French citizenship, surveilled as foreigner

A new biography by Annie Cohen-Solal, "Picasso, una vita da straniero" (Marsilio Specchi), reveals that Pablo Picasso never obtained French citizenship and was under police surveillance throughout his life. Drawing on archives from the Paris police prefecture, Cohen-Solal documents that the artist was considered an alien and outcast for three reasons: he did not speak French, was suspected of anarchism due to his Catalan associations, and was rejected by the Académie des Beaux-Arts as an avant-garde artist. In 1929, the Louvre refused the donation of "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." The biography links art history and social history, interpreting Picasso's 1901 self-portrait at the Musée National Picasso-Paris as an expression of extreme solitude. The artist depicts himself displaced to the right, enveloped in an oversized ultramarine blue coat, immobile yet resolute. Cohen-Solal also analyzes "Le Moulin de la Galette" and "Arlequin assis sur fond rouge" (1905), a watercolor and ink on cardboard showing a solitary, pensive puppet with an aged face on a child's body. In "Les Saltimbanques," the figures—Harlequin, two young acrobats, a girl, and a woman from Majorca—stand motionless with their bundles, appearing transient, their mystery unsolved. Picasso died on April 8, 1973; France now considers his work integral to its history, but he was never granted citizenship.