Pablo Picasso from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. He did not join the armed forces for any side or country during World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II. As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either world war. However, in 1940, he did apply for French citizenship, but it was refused on the grounds of his "extremist ideas evolving towards communism". This information was not revealed until 2003. At the start of the
Pablo Picasso using bronze smuggled to him by the French Resistance. Around this time, Picasso wrote poetry as an alternative outlet. Between 1935 and 1959 he wrote over 300 poems. Largely untitled except for a date and sometimes the location of where it was written (for example "Paris 16 May 1936"), these works were gustatory, erotic and at times scatological, as were his two full-length plays "Desire Caught by the Tail" (1941) and "The Four Little Girls" (1949). In 1944, after the liberation of Paris, Picasso, then 63 years old, began a romantic relationship with a young art student named Françoise Gilot.