

Executed as ‘dedications’ for close friends on the frontispieces of books, Portrait de femme, Scene de tauromachie and Tête humoristique are highly personal works which display Picasso’s creative genius and skills as a draughtsman to superb effect. In particular, the subject of the bull fight, featured within Scene de tauromachie, stands as one of the most iconic within Picasso’s entire œuvre due to the special significance it held for the artist. As 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’ (N. Cox & D. Povey, A Picasso Bestiary, London, 1995, p. 29).