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拍品專文
Cheval et taureau shows the agonised yet intimate moment when a bull, head lowered for maximum upward force, thrusts one of its horns deep into the body of a horse whose death-throes are rendered as an ecstasy of pain. The bull’s expression is one of savage ferocity as it obeys an atavistic instinct to gore its victim; its flared nostrils and angry brow speak of dominance, bloodlust and blind animality. Meanwhile the horse, with its head reared back, eyes widened, shrieks a final cry of terror.
Picasso’s affinity and identification with the power, virility and intensity of the bull is a motif which frequently recurs throughout his oeuvre - a multi-layered symbol expressive of the primordial life-force that charged his artistic vitality. In the context of his Spanish cultural heritage and more specifically the corrida, the bull embodied notions of aggression and raw brutality while the horse represented nobility and sacrifice. The bullfight was a spectacle in which the tragic struggle between the forces of life and death, the essence of the human condition, was repeatedly reenacted.
More widely, the artist was fully aware of the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany at the time and was exploring ways in which the suffering and torment that contemporary political turmoil entailed could be portrayed. Cheval et taureau anticipates some of the aspects of his most famous anti-war painting Guernica, made two years later during the Spanish civil war, in which horse and bull stand for helpless suffering and untamed barbarity.
The mark-making here is as purposeful and direct as the subject matter is elemental, its confidence typical of Picasso’s bravura certitude. The composition is taut - its framing barely able to contain the power and dynamism of its figures. The bull has one front hoof raised as it uses the full force of its musculature to deliver the fatal injury to its quarry while the horse similarly raises its own leg, but this time in a paroxysm of pain, a travesty of its normal elegance as its belly and rear legs are brought to ground.
Picasso also delineates a mirroring between the beasts as if to underline the symbiosis of their relationship in this final act. The viewer cannot help but notice the sinuously feminine lines of the horse’s mane as it flies in twisted movement, marks which are echoed in the bull’s lustily swooshing tail. The intensity of the ink hatches around the bull’s head and shoulders also shadow the body of the horse and the upper background as if to emphasise this area of the drawing as the locus for pain and the corresponding sensation of it.
Picasso wrestled with the complexity of desire in its many forms throughout his career. His art often explored the troublingly conflicted urges of arousal and aversion and Cheval et taureau exemplifies his honest recognition, through visual metaphors of subjugation, that a primal longing for life could be inextricably linked to a capacity for ruthless cruelty.
Picasso’s affinity and identification with the power, virility and intensity of the bull is a motif which frequently recurs throughout his oeuvre - a multi-layered symbol expressive of the primordial life-force that charged his artistic vitality. In the context of his Spanish cultural heritage and more specifically the corrida, the bull embodied notions of aggression and raw brutality while the horse represented nobility and sacrifice. The bullfight was a spectacle in which the tragic struggle between the forces of life and death, the essence of the human condition, was repeatedly reenacted.
More widely, the artist was fully aware of the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany at the time and was exploring ways in which the suffering and torment that contemporary political turmoil entailed could be portrayed. Cheval et taureau anticipates some of the aspects of his most famous anti-war painting Guernica, made two years later during the Spanish civil war, in which horse and bull stand for helpless suffering and untamed barbarity.
The mark-making here is as purposeful and direct as the subject matter is elemental, its confidence typical of Picasso’s bravura certitude. The composition is taut - its framing barely able to contain the power and dynamism of its figures. The bull has one front hoof raised as it uses the full force of its musculature to deliver the fatal injury to its quarry while the horse similarly raises its own leg, but this time in a paroxysm of pain, a travesty of its normal elegance as its belly and rear legs are brought to ground.
Picasso also delineates a mirroring between the beasts as if to underline the symbiosis of their relationship in this final act. The viewer cannot help but notice the sinuously feminine lines of the horse’s mane as it flies in twisted movement, marks which are echoed in the bull’s lustily swooshing tail. The intensity of the ink hatches around the bull’s head and shoulders also shadow the body of the horse and the upper background as if to emphasise this area of the drawing as the locus for pain and the corresponding sensation of it.
Picasso wrestled with the complexity of desire in its many forms throughout his career. His art often explored the troublingly conflicted urges of arousal and aversion and Cheval et taureau exemplifies his honest recognition, through visual metaphors of subjugation, that a primal longing for life could be inextricably linked to a capacity for ruthless cruelty.