PICASSO once described his adhesion to the Communist Party as “the logical outcome of my whole life”, so it’s odd that an exhibition that places his work in its political context as forcefully as this one has never before taken place.

It’s fortunate for Liverpool, though, as Picasso: Peace and Freedom will not only please the average visitor by bringing together some of the Spanish artist’s most famous works, but will also win the venue respect from art academics.

It opens with a timeline of his life placed next to world events, highlighting their close connection. Acts of war influenced Picasso but he also placed his mark on them – the first train to arrive in Berlin at the end of the Airlift bore the image of his Dove of Peace.

Tate’s show guides the visitor through his political leanings, its progression dependent upon which works the gallery could get permission to borrow. There is at least one notable absence – his response, in 1937, to the bombing of the Basque capital Guernica, by German and Italian warplanes, is now too fragile to travel.

Next best is The Charnel House (1944-5), which dominates one of the rooms on the gallery’s fourth floor.

Painted in the grey and black grisaille style Picasso reserved for his most serious works, its lack of colour reflects the news reels that inspired it.

A mass of body parts and anguished faces piled up like the corpses in a concentration camp, it depicts and protests against the murder of a Spanish Republican family in their own home.

Nearby is Monument to the Spaniards who Died for France (1945-47), a tribute to the Republicans who escaped interment by joining the French Resistance. Its ruddy blood reds and greys contrast dramatically with the more optimistic works in the same room – The Cockerel of the Liberation (1944) showing France’s emblematic bird in cheerful greens and yellows.

Symbols of war and peace appear in works throughout his life, as emphasised in the exhibition.

There is selection of his owl paintings – a motif of death but in reality the pet he rescued from illness – as well as a section from the last decade of his life entitled Mothers and Muskateers – standing for the opposing forces of harmony and violence.

Tate’s exhibition aims to reposition Picasso’s image as a Lothario to one of an activist, yet the women in his life are still very visible – their faces, and in one case even their homes, making an appearance.

The show guides you fairly well through themes it features while assuming some basic historical knowledge. Alongside the works of art are artefacts that connect Picasso to politics – photographs of him speaking at peace conferences, newspaper cuttings of the sketches he drew for publication in Les Lettres Francaises, Daily Worker pamphlets . . .

What comes across most strongly is the impression of a man who used his art to express his convictions, but who would not be swayed by the opinions of others without a fight.

Picasso’s relationship with the Communist Party was problematic. Its leaders often approved of his message but not of the methods of conveying it – preferring Socialist Realism over his abstract artistic style.

He was contrary even in his use of the dove as a symbol of peace – once saying it was “an extremely cruel bird.”