Sold with a photo-certificate from Mrs. Maya Picasso, dated Paris le 8 Mars 2008. Sold with a photo-certificate from Mr. Claude Picasso, dated le 9.03.08.
The actress Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) starred in some of Hollywood's finest and most fondly remembered films, such as 'The King and I' and 'An Affair to Remember'. Her career was honoured by the Motion Picture Academy as the definition of 'Perfection, Discipline and Elegance' and she was nominated six times for the the Best Actress Academy Award. Scottish-born Kerr made her reputation playing reserved English matrons such as Anna Leonowens in the film of Rodger and Hammerstein's 'The King and I', but will perhaps be best remembered for the greatest love scene committed to celluloid - her character's famous clinch with Burt Lancaster on a Hawaiian beach in 'From Here to Eternity'.
This work on paper provides an intimate depiction of one of Picasso's most favoured subjects: the bullring. His love of his homeland and an interest in the primal, even bestial, ceremony of the bull fight combined to make this one of the themes that the artist would return to throughout his life, especially during the decade of this work's conception. In this particularly colourful depiction Picasso has shown the ring as seen from above, creating a sense of the crowd's anticipation in the dashes of crayon that attest to his power as a draughtsman.