Minotauromachy

On Saturday, 23 March 1935, Picasso etched his “Minotauromachy” on copper plate. Developed in seven states, it features the minotaur, a mythological creature, part man, part bull, born from the unnatural union of Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos of Crete, with a bull that Poseidon, god of the sea, had sent the king. This is one of Picasso’s most accomplished engravings and one of the finest of the 20th century, considered an iconographic precedent to “Guernica” (1937). The minotaur, Picasso’s alter ego, is a key recurring figure in his work of the 1930s, the period during which he became involved with the surrealist movement.
Picasso presents a highly symbolic composition that is difficult to interpret, in which he combines both tenderness and violence, imbuing this etching with a marked visual poetry and at the same time making it a premonition of the Spanish Civil War. Around the beast, the artist creates a scene which alludes to paintings by the great masters of Western art and evokes, among others, details of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” in the Sistine Chapel, Velázquez’s “The Spinners”, Goya’s “The Second of May 1808 in Madrid” and Delacroix’s “Tiger Hunt”. Additionally, in the centre of the composition, between the blind minotaur and the young woman holding a candle and a bouquet of flowers―displaying the features of his romantic partner, Marie-Thérèse Walter―he places a pregnant bullfighter on the back of a wounded horse, also a clear allusion to Marie-Thérèse, who at that time was pregnant with their daughter Maya. To the left, a man who hides his nakedness with a cloth resembling a perizonium climbs the ladder in horror, fleeing from the beast, in reference to the Crucifixion. And in the upper section, two girls contemplate the scene from a window where a few doves rest; in the background, a sailboat can be glimpsed on the horizon.
This print of “Minotauromachy”, complete with a dedication and printed by Roger Lacourière in Paris on laid Montval paper, of the etching’s seventh and final state, was donated by Picasso to Museus d’Art de Barcelona in 1938, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. In 1963, following the creation of the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, the print became part of its collection, seeing as all municipally owned works by the artist were transferred to the newly created museum.