Pablo Picasso chose not to fight for his country in World War II but instead to hand out postcards. In occupied Paris, he gave away images of Guernica to Nazi soldiers. When they asked, 'Did you do this?', he would reply, 'No, you did'.

Bringing together over 150 of his works, along with letters and publications, the Tate Liverpool presents an alternative side to the extrovert fun-seeker that Picasso has come to be considered as. Widely labelled a 'coward' for having sat out of two World Wars, Picasso was, in fact, a political activist, a campaigner for peace and, despite his playboy lifestyle, he gave generously to women's charities and groups.

A member of the French Communist Party, he considered it his duty to express the horrors of human conflict, alongside political and social messages in his Cubist, Neoclassic, Surrealist and Expressionist works.

For this exhibition, his most overtly political image, The Charnel House (1944-45), heavily influenced by the Nazi concentration camps, returns to the UK for the first time in 50 years. Other works include Rape of the Sabine Women (1963), painted at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Monument to the Spanish Who Died for France (1945-47), a tribute to the Spaniards who fled their country to assist the Free French; and Dove of Peace (1961), which has since become a global emblem for the peace movement.

Examining the first exhibition to explore Picasso's post- war art, Tim Marlow leads an engaging tour of the painter's politically charged works, casting radical new light on arguably the most influential artist of the 20th century.