Picasso’s experiments with color burst onto the canvas in full technicolor glory as he returns to his favorite artistic theme and his own, personal passion: the bullfight. The artist himself admitted that he often painted bullfights, which were traditionally held on Sundays, when he was unable to attend. With its heavy brushstrokes, the central images of the panicking grey horse act as an imposing tonal contrast to exaggerate the use of color that capture the moment of the bullfighter’s death. Viewers hardly notice the horse is dying due to the entrails being grey in tone. The absence of gore from horse and man is taken up by the red cape, circling in a bloody cloud between the bull and the fighter. The vibrant, emotive use of color creates a powerful sensation of crackling, electric energy, violent movement, and death. Picasso increasingly focuses on this theme in a prophetic series, eventually building towards his renowned Guernica (1937): his response to the Spanish Civil War where this horse’s head reappears.

SKU: 6976
Creator: Pablo Picasso
Date: 1933
Original Medium: oil on Canvas
Original Size: 12 3/16 x 15 3/4 in
Location: Musée National Picasso
© Succession Picasso 2010