Revealed: secret battle 'anarchist' Picasso lost to become French

French police kept Pablo Picasso under surveillance for nearly 40 years - and when the Spanish-born painter applied for citizenship the authorities could not decide whether he was an anarchist or a communist so they ruled him undesirable just in case.

Recently released intelligence reports - including his 1940 citizenship application that Picasso kept secret from his family - chart the artist's life from 1901, when he arrived in Paris for his first exhibition.

The 'so-called modern painter', as the first of many plodding police reports describes the then 19-year-old genius, 'keeps irregular hours and sometimes even does not return at night' to his lodgings at the home of 'known anarchist' Pierre Marrach, a gallery owner.

The 1901 report, including information from the caretaker of Marrach's building in Montmartre and a conversation overheard in a cafe, finds 'grounds for considering him an anarchist'. That seems to be based on one police officer's bemusement at the art world's enthusiasm for Picasso's work. 'One of his recent paintings shows soldiers in foreign uniforms beating a beggar on the ground. Also in his room are several paintings representing mothers being rebuffed as they beg from the upper classes,' writes the officer.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1207943,00.html

Maybe this is just more detail.

their secret dossiers they keep on individuals don't they?
i like this one -- because i'm a picasso fan and it give a lot of flavor to a time gone by.