'La Drôle de guerre': Picasso's 'Femme nue se coiffant' and the 'Phony War' in France

• Autores: Kirsten Hoving Powell
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 138, Nº 1117, 1996, págs. 235-245
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Near midnight on 1st September 1939, Pablo Picasso and his mistress Dora Maar left Paris for Royan, a small resort town near Bordeaux.' At dawn that morning the armies of the Third Reich had invaded Poland and, as Picasso neared Royan, the crowded roads were lined with horses requisitioned for the army. By the following June, with an estimated one-fifth of the population of France fleeing the advancing German armies, the road to Bordeaux would overflow with refugees in buses, in cars, in horse-carts, on bicycles, on foot, some dying of starvation, some killed by German bombs destined for bridges.2 But even in September, the atmosphere in France was ominous, and Picasso had no sooner reached his destination than he was forced to return to Paris for papers of permission to remain in Royan.3 While he was in Paris, the shrill shrieks of air-raid sirens sent him to a bomb shelter as anti-aircraft gunners shot at imagined bombers.'