Scène de tauromachie

Settling in the South of France after the Second World War enabled Picasso to rediscover the joy of bullfighting, which he had known well as a child in Malaga and had sorely missed since his refusal to return to Spain after Franco came to power in 1939. His enthusiasm for the sport saw him financially assist a temporary arena near Vallauris, as the village had no permanent bullring and the subject would become a recurrent theme in his art during the fifties and sixties, especially in his ceramics.