In 1948, Poland’s new communist government was badly in need of legitimacy and desperate for international recognition. So they did what any self-respecting left-wing government would do, back in those days, in order to win a bit of respect; they held a cultural Congress.
In 1948, Poland’s new communist government was badly in need of legitimacy and desperate for international recognition. So they did what any self-respecting left-wing government would do, back in those days, in order to win a bit of respect; they held a cultural Congress. They invited Picasso, A. J. P. Taylor, Aldous Huxley, a host of prominent Soviet literary bureaucrats and whichever left-leaning writers they could dredge up from anywhere else. They put them all up in the best hotel in the war-damaged city of Wroclaw (Picasso got the suite Hitler had recently used). They produced all kinds of normally scarce luxuries for the buffet table, and then sat back to bask in the reflected glory.
At first, everything seemed to go well. One account from the time describes the mesmerising effect of Picasso’s entrance:
Hundreds of artists, writers, composers from Africa, India, Ceylon, South America . . . all of them turned their gaze on the Spanish painter in the colourful ripped shirt, walking into the hall.
Alas the affair quickly went sour, as these things tend to do. Scarcely had the Congress begun when one of the Soviet bureaucrats, apparently under instructions to ensure that the Polish comrades didn’t become too pleased with themselves, walked up to the podium, pulled out a thick speech and began to denounce Jean-Paul Sartre.
Picasso ripped off his headphones. Taylor and Huxley conferred furiously. The Polish hosts went about wringing their hands, for they knew that this meant the Congress was ruined.
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