A Refeição do Menino [The Little Boy's Meal]

This lithograph is in clear dialogue with the painting «Almoço do Trolha» [The Bricklayer’s Lunch] (1947), showing the family in a domestic setting, once again gathered around a meal, with the father feeding the child seated on the mother’s lap. Signs of poverty shape the composition, and a dove can be seen—symbol of peace—which, in the previous year, 1949, had become the emblem of the World Congress of Partisans for Peace in Paris, based on a drawing by Picasso, who was then a member of the French Communist Party. On the table lies a bitten watermelon, like the one in the painting «Fish Vendor Eating Watermelon» (1949).