Pablo Picasso

Estate of the artist (inv. 55909)

Marina Picasso (the artist's granddaughter; by descent from the above)

Acquired from the above

New York, Jan Krugier Gallery, Masters of Modern Sculpture, 1989, no. 25

Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz,  Linie, Licht und Schatten. Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 1999, no. 183, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Picasso - Sous le soleil de Mithra, 2001, no. 124, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Valencia, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, El fuego bajo les cenizas, 2005, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Paris, Fondation Dina Vierny – Musée Maillol, Le feu sous les cendres de Picasso à Basquiat, 2005-06, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Munich, Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Das ewige Auge - Von Rembrandt bis Picasso. Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2007, no. 189, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Roland Penrose, The Sculpture of Picasso, New York, 1967, another version illustrated p. 158 (as dating from 1957)

Werner Spies, Picasso. Das Plastische Werk, Berlin & Düsseldorf, 1983, no. 512.I (as dating from 1957)

Werner Spies, Picasso. The Sculptures, Catalogue raisonné of the Sculptures, Ostfildern & Stuttgart, 2000, no. 512.I, another version illustrated p. 381 (as dating from 1957)

There is some surface dirt and abrasions, consistent with age and handling. Apart from a small loss on the front of the base and a crack on the left foreleg, this work is in very good original condition.
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Picasso’s Le Taureau, impressively modelled and highly symbolic, is one of his first major sculptures of the post-war period. Following the war he produced a number of large-scale models of the animals that had a particular symbolic significance for him such as the goat (fig. 1) and the bull. From the early 1930s onwards the bull had been the chief signifier of Picasso’s tempestuous and virile nature, most notably in the form of the mythological Minotaur. In 1946 the artist and his family moved to Vallauris in the south of France and would often attend bullfights at the Roman arenas in Nîmes and Arles. Neil Cox and Deborah Povey suggest: ‘For Picasso, the bullfight engendered special relationships between the horse, the matador, the picador, the Minotaur and, of course, the artist himself. […] the ritualistic dimension of the bullfight mediates Picasso’s own assimilation and reworking of the bull’s ancient status in myth and religion as both sacrificial victim and giver of life. For in his work the vestigial survival in the bullfight of centuries of mystical metamorphoses of the virile power of the bull is given fresh urgency and meaning’ (N. Cox & D. Povey, A Picasso Bestiary, London, 1995, p. 29).

Discussing the evolution of this plaster and wood version and the two bronze casts of Le Taureau, Elizabeth Cowling wrote: ‘Ever since it was exhibited at the Picasso retrospective in Paris in 1966-7 this sculpture has always been dated 1957. Possibly this was when two bronze casts were made in the Valsuani foundry. However there is no doubt that the original plaster dates from the spring of 1950 at the latest, because it is visible in its definitive form in studio photographs in which ‘The Pregnant Woman’ of 1950 appears in a still unfinished state. This means that ‘The Bull’ was one of the first sculptures Picasso made in the rue du Fournas studios in Vallauris, and it may date from the latter part of 1949 when he first began to sculpt there intensively’ (E. Cowling in Picasso: Sculptor/Painter (exhibition catalogue), Tate, London, 1994, pp. 278-279).