"Picasso: Homage to the bullfighter "
2000-01-20 until 2000-03-26
Fundacao Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva
Lisbon, , PT Portugal

I paint as others write their biographies. My canvases, be they finished or not, are the pages of my diary and are valid as such. - Pablo Picasso. Picasso’s ancestral fascination with the bull results on the one hand, as Antonio Saura says, from a semantic incompatibility based on an ephemeral and fleeting art which is vertiginously developed in time. The theme of this exhibition is varied and does not follow the usual lines of Picasso’s artistic chronology but follows those of the man, a man extremely generous with his friends to whom he bequeathed what he considered the best of himself: collages, drawings, engravings and many types of ceramics.

Picasso sought the explanation of life and death in Dominguin’s art of bullfighting. A huge number of projects emerged from the friendship between the painter and the bullfighter, among them were projects for bull rings, books and many ideas on bullfighters and their art.

The Dominguin-Bosé collection, now on display, includes some exceptional exhibits, such as the drawing of Jacqueline, Picasso’s companion, engravings of Toros y Toreros, and the author’s proofs, such as Pintor y modelo and Faunos, series begun in 1933, as well as the book Toros y Toreros by Luis Miguel Dominguin, illustrated by Picasso with comments by George Boudaille.

Among the ceramics (1959-1963) there are a number of pieces belonging to the Mougins atelier, made with the artist’s favourite subjects, fauns and bulls, and a set of ten pieces where the author lets loose his imagination and creates a whole world of mythological images.

The exhibition Homage to the Bullfighter by Pablo Picasso is included in the cycle Arpad and Vieira’s friends. The first meeting between Arpad, Vieira and Picasso took place in 1939 in favour of the Republican cause.

Related Links:

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