P ablo Picasso’s Le Matador will make its auction debut at the Impressionist and Modern 𓂃Art Evening Sale (28 February, London), as it is unveiled in public for the first time since the exhibition at the Palais des Papes in Avignon shortly after the artist’s death in 1973. Monumental in scale, highly charged and painted in vivid colours, Le Matador is the culmination of ൩a life-long obsession of Picasso’s that r💮emained one of the most important themes throughout his career.
The painting is a brilliant display of the virtuosity with which Picasso combined 🍬the complex elements that had shaped his life and art and stands as a defiant tribute to the heroic 🐓figure of the matador – embodying the artist’s own Andalusian machismo.
Picasso had begun to feel that his time on this earth was running out, and so engaged in constant conversation with the great masters before him – Goya, Velasquez and Delacܫroix – following tꦚhe traditions they had set in order to reinvent them and make a lasting mark.
The bullfight became a symbol for the most public display of violence, bravery and ability and for Picasso its attraction certainly lay in🦋 its powerful contradictions: grace and brutality, entertainment and tragedy, and ultimately, life and death. This work is unique in conveying a human dimension that is lacking in many of the earlier depictions, with the matador’s stylised face and large, wide open eyes revealing a vulnerability and sense of mortality that reflect the artist’s own concerns.
Unlike his other depictions of the matador from this period where the figure is depicted against a plain, monochrome background, this painting uniquely combines the image of the matador resplendent in 🎉an elaborate costume with that of the arena. The lower half of the background represents the sand of the bullfighting ring, with hundreds of spectators in the upper half.
The experience of being taken to the bullring by his father at the age of eight had a strong impression on Picasso, and his first painting, Le petit picador jaune, was of a matador on a horse in the arena observed by the spectators behind him. It is all the more fitting that at the end of his life, he returned to the celebrated iꦇmagery of the bullfights that he had grown up watching.
Despite leavingℱ Spain to live in Paris in his youth, Picasso retained a sense of Spanish identity, and the matador was the character that allowed him to draw attention to his heritage. During the last years of the ninetee🎐nth century Picasso stayed in Madrid, where he copied the old masters at the Prado, and was no doubt influenced by Goya’s bullfighting scenes. Picasso’s personal memories became intertwined with his artistic heritage, and in this final series of matador portraits the ghost of Goya is strongly present.
Helena Newman, Global Co-Head of Sotheby’s Impressioওnist & Modern Art Departmeܫnt & Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, said:
‘This powerful portrait exemplifies Picasso’s creative force in his final years and represents the culmination of a life-long obsession. Through the subject of the bullfight, Picasso explores the theme of life and death, creation and destruction, earth and sun, casting himself at the centre stage of the spectacle. We are thrilled to be presenting two prime examples of works by Picasso at his very best in one sale – Le Matador and Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Wal🎃ter) – both from key periods of the artist’s career.’
