More

We use some essential cookies to make this website work. We'd like to set other cookies to remember your settings, measure website use and inform our marketing. We also use content from other sites in our pages, and those sites may also set cookies. More information can be found in our cookies policy.

08 Bullfighting

Picasso’s work is deeply marked by his fascination with bullfighting, from the first drawings executed in La Coruña to the last great matador figures. The artist embraced this theme—strongly linked to the Spanish imagination—which he stripped of its folkloric elements in order to concentrate on its visual power, symbolic significance, and sacred dimension. An ardent aficionado, he had attended the ritual of bullfighting since childhood and continued to visit arenas throughout his life, during his stays in Spain and the South of France.
Picasso’s works often focus on the moments when the action is at its most intense: the charging bull disembowelling the horse and the death of the bullfighter. The tragic instant of the ★cogida★, when the bull tosses the bullfighter on one of its horns, was the subject of several works between the late 1910s and the 1930s. The circle of the bullring would in this instance form the space of an imaginary theatre, in which sexuality, putting to death, and the sacred intermingle and merge into each other.