Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Theatre: Picasso's Artful Occupation
Ian Buckley's new play that opens in London on March 11. PETER FROST talks to him while recalling the nazi art theft that inspired it

Playwright Ian Buckley is no stranger to communist ideas or to the city of Paris and French life. Politically active, he now spends much of his time in France.

"In my play I've tried to take my audience back nearly threequarters of a century to the occupied Paris of 1940. It was a crucial time in the history of Europe, of communism and of art," he explains.

Buckley's new play finds Pablo Picasso in the vaults of the Paris branch of the Bank of Industry and Commerce during the nazi occupation, with two young German officers who are making an inventory of the Spanish painter's stored works.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
weimar
Books / 5 August 2026
5 August 2026

GORDON PARSONS recommends an entertaining account of the years between Germany’s defeat in WWI and Hitler’s seizure of power

“Demonstration in Battersea, 1939” by Clive Branson who had served in the International Brigades in Spain
Spanish Civil War 90th Anniversary / 4 July 2026
4 July 2026

JIM JUMP describes how artists in Britain rallied to the anti-fascist cause

Tom Mooney Company from the Lincoln Battalion, during the Spanish Civil War, Jarama, Spain, 1937
History / 24 February 2026
24 February 2026

CJ ATKINS commemorates one of the most dramatic moments in working-class history

Prosecutor Daniel Adler gives a press conference in front of Giuseppe Ghislandi's 18th-century painting
Argentina / 5 September 2025
5 September 2025