It is a tiny party, mired in serious financial difficulties and accustomed for decades to suffering defeat after defeat and recording anecdotal percentages in elections.
At the same time, the French Communist Party (PCF) is surely the European political formation with the most valuable artistic heritage, the result of its years of glory, in which it not only gathered the support of the working class, but also of creators and intellectuals.
The PCF launches a popular subscription to escape ruin
Communist heritage for sale
From Pablo Picasso to Alberto Giacometti, passing through Fernand Léger and other names of the 20th century avant-gardes, artists who were militants or sympathized with the party gave their works to the PCF or its leaders.
In some cases, the trail of these works was lost.
Others are exhibited in museums or are in private hands.
And others spent years in official offices or warehouses.
If the pandemic does not prevent it, in November many of these jewels of the PCF will be exhibited in a place that is by itself its greatest jewel, in this case architectural: the headquarters, in Colonel Fabien square, in Paris.
This corrugated glass and concrete building, designed by Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer and inaugurated in 1972, is one of the great constructions of architectural modernity in the French capital.
Although it is protected as a historical monument, it does not appear on the tourist circuits and, in these times of confinement and curfew, it has the air of a futuristic ocean liner stranded in a nineteenth-century city.
"The interesting thing is that there was a generosity, a few donations because the Communist Party was the only one that represented hope for artists," says Yolande Rasle, curator, along with Renaud Faroux, of the exhibition
Free as art.
One hundred years of history between artists and the PCF
.
“He could have been wrong.
Some slammed the door, denied it, but at one time it was hope. "
Rasle and Faroux, who are not militants, were commissioned to organize the exhibition on the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the party in 1920.
'La colombe est étranglée (dyptique)' (The dove is strangled), by Eduardo Arroyo from 1963, which is exhibited in the exhibition but does not belong to the PCF.Thierry Debonnaire
In the exhibition you will be able to see pieces closely associated with the history of the formation, such as
Freedom, I write your name
, a tapestry by Léger with the verses that Paul Éluard wrote during the Nazi occupation of France.
The tapestry hangs on a wall in the reception of the PCF leadership offices, on the fifth floor of the Niemeyer building.
One of the most curious works, and perhaps the most valuable, is the
Mona Lisa
by Leonardo da Vinci to which the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp drew a mustache and a goatee, and which is
entitled LHOOQ
, acronyms that, read in French, sound like like this: "She has heat in her butt."
The play has its history.
It was a gift from the communist poet Louis Aragon to General Secretary Georges Marchais, who kept it in his office.
The newspaper
Le Figaro
would tell years later that, when Marchais died in 1997, the daughters of his first marriage wanted to take him away, but Liliane, his second wife, recalled that Aragon had donated the painting to Marchais not as a private person, but to the general secretary .
The Mona Lisa
with the mustache and goatee thus remained in Colonel Fabien's square.
Later, the PCF handed it over to the Pompidou Center.
From Picasso there will be a copper plate with a portrait of the communist politician Marcel Cachin and a lithograph with the faces of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted and executed in 1953 in the United States on charges of spying for the Soviet Union.
Also the legendary cover of March 12, 1953 of
Les lettres françaises
, the cultural publication of the PCF, directed by Aragon.
It is the number dedicated to the death of Stalin, idolized then by the communists.
The Soviet tyrant appears, in the stroke of the author of
Guernica
, as a young rebel, in a style far removed from the canon of socialist realism.
The portrait was greeted as an affront to the guardians of Orthodoxy.
"I brought a bouquet of flowers for the funeral, they did not like them, it is something that happens, but normally people are not scolded because they have not liked the flowers," lamented Picasso.
The exhibition, which will include more than 150 pieces, goes beyond household names.
As reflected in the catalog prepared by Rasle and Faroux, it will trace a story that - going through the quarrel between realists and abstracts, the trip of the party's artists to Cuba, the paintings of the Spanish Eduardo Arroyo or the Chilean Roberto Matta - reaches art contemporary street map.
All of this is content.
The container is the most spectacular of these works, the
Niemeyer space
, with its bright offices, the large oval room where the Central Committee met, the roof overlooking Paris.
Or the Delegation room, where the interview with Rasle and Faroux takes place, and which looks like a set from a science fiction movie from the sixties or seventies,
Star Trek
or
Star
Wars
.
"This table was designed by Niemeyer," says Faroux.
“And here they sat [Yasir] Arafat, [Nelson] Mandela, [Enrico] Berlinguer… Without a doubt, [Santiago] Carrillo.
You have to think that the splendor of the French Communist Party was also due to this building ”.
The work 'LHOOQ'., By Duchamp, a 'Gioconda' with mustaches.
The value of plastic works is relative: gifts to the party were rarely the pieces that would later be priced the most.
A few years ago, another version of
Duchamp's
LHOOQ
sold at auction for € 631,500.
Another thing is the real estate capital: the headquarters.
The PCF already rents four of the six floors and, occasionally, its rooms for events such as concerts or fashion shows.
Due to its size, location and architectural value, selling it could bring in millions of euros.
In 2010, the state bought from the party the headquarters of the daily
L'Humanité
, a building also by Niemeyer, but less known and on the outskirts of Paris, for 12 million euros.
And yet, getting rid of the building and the works is not part of the plans of the current leaders.
“When the artists gave us the works, it was not to sell them.
There was a trust and a meaning.
Yes, we have financial difficulties and we are a small party, but we want to be faithful to this, "he says in the office where
LHOOQ
Julien Zoughebi, a collaborator of the senator and former national secretary Pierre Laurent,
hung for years
.
"We tighten our belts," he declares, "but for now we are not touching art."