"I stand for life against death; I stand for peace against war."

Doves held great emotional significance for Picasso. They appeared as motifs in some of his earliest preserved drawings from his childhood, and they also played such a prominent role in his father's art that Don José Ruiz Blasco earned the nickname 'The Dove Lover'.

The Spanish Civil War played a decisive role in Picasso's perspective. His dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, has said that Picasso had previously been 'the most apolitical man' he had ever known: 'He had never thought about politics at all, but the Franco uprising in 1936 was an event that shook him out of this tranquility and made him an advocate for peace and freedom.' (Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler with Francis Crémieux, My Galleries and Painters, London 1971, p.108.)

After painting his famous response to the German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in 1937, Picasso became a symbol of anti-fascism and specifically the fight against fascism among artists and intellectuals.