A Lifelong Passion for the Bullfight

Painted in 1922, *Corrida* takes its title from the Spanish word for bullfight. Picasso was a man of wide-ranging curiosity, but one interest stayed with him from childhood to old age: the bullring. Bullfighting is one of the most important themes in his work and keeps resurfacing throughout his career. As a small boy he followed his father to the bullring in his hometown of Málaga, and later he chased bullfighting events around the country, including those in Arles in the south of France. Even as he grew older, he introduced friends such as Georges Braque and Max Jacob to the spectacle, and in an interview he is said to have remarked that, had he not been a painter, he would have been a matador.

His first bullfighting picture dates from 1889, when he was nine. And he didn't stop at depicting the fights themselves: inspired by the bull, he also took up the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull creature of Greek mythology. Picasso's Minotaurs are often highly sensual, and the bull in them can be linked back to the bullfight. You can see works featuring the Minotaur at the Musée Picasso in Paris, too.

Picasso even published a book on the subject. It collects his bullfighting works: he asked a matador friend to write the text and filled the rest with his own art. Right up to the end of his life, the bullfight and the bull remained a major part of his art.