Picasso: Romancero du Picador

Pen and Wash Drawings of the Bullfight

For Picasso, animals were symbols of instinctual power and mythic representations of archetypal life forces, as they had been for Renaissance artists earlier still. In particular Picasso seems to have identified with the bull or Minotaur as embodying a heavy but also poignant power. There are traces of classicism, too - echoes of Greek vase painting, for example - in his brilliant depictions of the bull in his bullfight scenes. This film concentrates on a series of virtuoso pen drawings of bullfights, strung together into a narrative.

For more information see section 19 and section 28

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