Pablo Picasso of postcards to raise funds for the Spanish Republican cause. In 1944, Picasso joined the French Communist Party, attended the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Poland, and in 1950 received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. Party criticism in 1953 of his portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest in Soviet politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. His dealer, D-H. Kahnweiler, a socialist, termed Picasso's communism "sentimental" rather than political, saying "He has never read a line of Karl Marx, nor of Engels of
Picasso and the Ballets Russes drawn figure of Picasso is the result of endless well-drawn figures he erases, corrects, covers over, and which serves him as a foundation. In opposition to all schools he seems to end his work with a sketch." Additionally, Guillaume Apollinaire, who wrote the program notes for "Parade", described Picasso's designs as "a kind of surrealism" three years before Surrealism developed as an art movement in Paris. In 1924, Picasso designed the sets and costumes for Massine's "Mercure", which was produced not by Diaghilev, but by Comte Étienne de Beaumont with music by Satie. Picasso did not design for the theater