Picasso. Bullfight (1934)

For the second time since its inception, the Contexts programme of exhibitions presented an analysis of a work by Pablo Picasso from the Permanent Collection; on the first occasion it was Harlequin with a Mirror, which opened the series in 1995, and this time it is the turn of Bullfight. Alongside this work was exhibited a marvellous group of fifteen works by the artist on the same theme, the bullfight, which Picasso produced during the mid-1930s, and which can be considered in some respects the precursor to Guernica. The main aim of the exhibition, curated by Tomàs Llorens and sponsored by the Caja Madrid Foundation, is to show the most profound interpretation of the world of the bull that Picasso ever produced, an interpretation that goes beyond the shock, the pain or the physical violence which seems to have made Picasso consider the rite of bullfighting as a parable of love and death.