A Theory of Pablo Picasso’s Palette of Words: Indexed Information and Context in His Art and Poetry Spanning the Occupation

It has always been understood that Pablo Picasso imbued his arts with a rich symbolism. Those representations could be understood readily, at times only with some effort, or utterly inaccessible at others. A part of that symbolism is yet to be understood, with numerous points of information and cross-reference “hiding” in plain sight. He was fond of newsprint as a substrate and medium for painting, not only during wartime, but especially so in the deprivations of World War II. The relationship between some paintings typical during the period and the newsprint on which they were done was intense, such that the substrate inhabits the medium, sharing equal part with the composition. Around the same time or after, Picasso was crafting poems of an often cryptic nature. An in-depth look at two poems reveals a multitude of references to paintings on newsprint and to the contents of that newsprint. With new understandings of those symbols, evidence emerges that Picasso’s “palette of words” was more than just metaphor, but also descriptive of a theory and a method which the artist put into practice in at least two instances of WWII-era newsprint paintings and famously cryptic poems, detailed here.