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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Claude Ruiz-Picasso dated Le 11 mai 2005.
Maya Widmaier-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
The theme of the cheval blessé, the wounded horse, was central to Picasso's imagery during the mid-1930s. It appeared in numerous paintings, drawings and prints, and achieved its most memorable and terrifying expression in Guernica, 1937 (Zervos, vol. 10, no. 65; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid). The horse in agony, with twisted neck and upturned head, first made its appearance in two small canvases that Picasso painted in 1923, Cheval blessé and Course de taureaux (Z., vol. 5, nos. 147 and 149), as well as related pencil studies. It is, together with some rape scenes done in 1920, the only violent imagery to be found in the artist's classical period, which was then nearing its culmination, and, indeed, it appeared as a harbinger of darker surrealist themes to come. Daix has noted (in Dictionnaire Picasso, Paris, 1995, pp. 185-186) that, in addition to Picasso's recollections of bullfights he attended in Spain, from his childhood to his last visit there in 1913, the artist was also influenced by the horses in friezes of the Parthenon of which he owned a plaster reproduction, and the horse in Seurat's final masterpiece, Le cirque (1890-1891; de Hauke, no. 225; Musée d'Orsay, Paris).
Picasso returned to the wounded horse as a key aspect in the life and death drama of the bullfight in two paintings, again of modest size, done in September 1933 - both are titled Courses de taureaux (Z., vol. 8, nos. 138 and 214; Musée Picasso, Paris). In the former a bull carries off a gravely wounded female bullfighter astride her horse, Picasso's personal reworking of the mythical rape of Europa; and in the latter painting a male torero meets his end, as the entrails pour out of a gaping wound in the horse's belly. There is also a powerful drawing of a bull goring a horse dated 24 September (Picasso Project, no. 33-095). Picasso returned to this theme in early December 1933 with the present drawing of horse studies, and on the following day made an ink and wash drawing of a minotaur - the half-bull, half-man that Picasso appropriated from Greek legend - strangling a horse (P. P., no. 33-121). In these works the opposing symbolism of bull and horse becomes apparent: the bull is the brutal and seething monster of subconscious desire, capable of cruelly ravishing women and killing horses, which represent human love, sacrifice and suffering. Indeed, in a series of etchings done on the theme of the femme-torero in June 1934 (Geiser and Baer, vol. 2, nos. 425-429), the female victim is clearly identifiable as the artist's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, the youthful 'other woman' in the artist's increasingly contentious relationship with his wife Olga. The white or palomino horse became the surrogate of the blond Marie-Thérèse.
The bull versus horse theme was again significant in the surrealist drama in one of Picasso's greatest prints. La Minotauromachie, which he etched in March 1935 (G. & B., vol. III, no. 573). Thereafter it appeared in his poetry, which the artist began to write in April 1935, during a period of personal crisis when he was hardly able to paint, as he contemplated divorcing Olga to be with Marie-Thérèse, who was then pregnant. Two years later he transformed the imagery of his private trials and tribulations into the universal symbols of suffering and victimisation in Guernica, in which the wounded and agonised horse served as the linchpin of the mural composition, seen directly below the glare of the lightbulb that illuminates the scene.
Maya Widmaier-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
The theme of the cheval blessé, the wounded horse, was central to Picasso's imagery during the mid-1930s. It appeared in numerous paintings, drawings and prints, and achieved its most memorable and terrifying expression in Guernica, 1937 (Zervos, vol. 10, no. 65; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid). The horse in agony, with twisted neck and upturned head, first made its appearance in two small canvases that Picasso painted in 1923, Cheval blessé and Course de taureaux (Z., vol. 5, nos. 147 and 149), as well as related pencil studies. It is, together with some rape scenes done in 1920, the only violent imagery to be found in the artist's classical period, which was then nearing its culmination, and, indeed, it appeared as a harbinger of darker surrealist themes to come. Daix has noted (in Dictionnaire Picasso, Paris, 1995, pp. 185-186) that, in addition to Picasso's recollections of bullfights he attended in Spain, from his childhood to his last visit there in 1913, the artist was also influenced by the horses in friezes of the Parthenon of which he owned a plaster reproduction, and the horse in Seurat's final masterpiece, Le cirque (1890-1891; de Hauke, no. 225; Musée d'Orsay, Paris).
Picasso returned to the wounded horse as a key aspect in the life and death drama of the bullfight in two paintings, again of modest size, done in September 1933 - both are titled Courses de taureaux (Z., vol. 8, nos. 138 and 214; Musée Picasso, Paris). In the former a bull carries off a gravely wounded female bullfighter astride her horse, Picasso's personal reworking of the mythical rape of Europa; and in the latter painting a male torero meets his end, as the entrails pour out of a gaping wound in the horse's belly. There is also a powerful drawing of a bull goring a horse dated 24 September (Picasso Project, no. 33-095). Picasso returned to this theme in early December 1933 with the present drawing of horse studies, and on the following day made an ink and wash drawing of a minotaur - the half-bull, half-man that Picasso appropriated from Greek legend - strangling a horse (P. P., no. 33-121). In these works the opposing symbolism of bull and horse becomes apparent: the bull is the brutal and seething monster of subconscious desire, capable of cruelly ravishing women and killing horses, which represent human love, sacrifice and suffering. Indeed, in a series of etchings done on the theme of the femme-torero in June 1934 (Geiser and Baer, vol. 2, nos. 425-429), the female victim is clearly identifiable as the artist's mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, the youthful 'other woman' in the artist's increasingly contentious relationship with his wife Olga. The white or palomino horse became the surrogate of the blond Marie-Thérèse.
The bull versus horse theme was again significant in the surrealist drama in one of Picasso's greatest prints. La Minotauromachie, which he etched in March 1935 (G. & B., vol. III, no. 573). Thereafter it appeared in his poetry, which the artist began to write in April 1935, during a period of personal crisis when he was hardly able to paint, as he contemplated divorcing Olga to be with Marie-Thérèse, who was then pregnant. Two years later he transformed the imagery of his private trials and tribulations into the universal symbols of suffering and victimisation in Guernica, in which the wounded and agonised horse served as the linchpin of the mural composition, seen directly below the glare of the lightbulb that illuminates the scene.