Original Pablo Picasso Poster "Congres Mondial De La Paix" 1949 - Mourlot

This is an original lithographic poster created in 1949 by Pablo Picasso for the Congrès Mondial des Partisans de la Paix in Paris — one of the most historically charged commissions in the history of 20th-century art, and the moment that gave the world its single most recognised symbol of peace. This example is the large format version, measuring 23.6 × 31.5 in, significantly rarer than the standard edition and among the most sought-after states of this iconic image.

The story of this poster begins in the weeks before the Congress, when the poet Louis Aragon visited Picasso's studio and asked him for a drawing to serve as the Congress's emblem. Picasso handed him a lithograph he had recently made of a dove — a white pigeon belonging to the painter Henri Matisse — drawn with the economy and authority of a man who had been thinking about birds his entire life. Aragon chose it immediately. Mourlot printed it. And within days, La Colombe de la Paix was plastered across Paris, reproduced across the world, and had entered permanently into the visual language of the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) had joined the French Communist Party in 1944, and his political commitment was inseparable from his artistic one. The Dove was not a simple gesture — it was a synthesis: the Mediterranean tradition of the dove as symbol of the Holy Spirit and of Venus, filtered through Picasso's Cubist economy of line, transformed by the urgency of a world that had just survived a catastrophic war and was already sliding toward the next confrontation. It is the most widely reproduced image Picasso ever made, and this large-format original — printed by Mourlot at the moment of its creation — is among the most historically significant printed works of the century.

The poster is linen backed and in good condition, with restorations visible — honest signs of a document that was posted, displayed and lived in the world it was made to change. See pictures for full condition details.

One of the most important images of the 20th century — Picasso's Dove, in its rarest large format, at the moment the world needed it most.