Following "Guernica" (1936), almost twenty years elapsed before Picasso once again engaged in painting militant works. "I am for life over death; I am for peace against war" he declared in Sheffield in 1950. Vallauris' temple of peace constitutes the culmination point of Picasso's political œuvre. The municipality had placed the château's romanesque chapel, deconsecrated during the revolution, at the painter's disposal. There, during the summer of 1952, Picasso created War and Peace, two monumental compositions placed face to face, whose upper regions follow the curve of the vaulting's architecture. The ancient building grants War and Peace, with its obvious references to ancient art and prehistoric cave painting, a sacred and universal anchorage. As the artist stated to Claude Roy, "The chapel is rather dark and I would like it to remain that way, so that visitors might discover it as they would the wall paintings in a prehistoric cave, using candles to make their way, gradually discovering the figures as the candle's flickering light dances upon what I have painted."