Libro tauromaquia picasso biography

About the Artist

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born on October 26, 1881, in Malaga, Spain. His father was a professor in the School of Arts and Crafts and often took him to bullfights which would influence much of his art throughout his career. It is said that Picasso learned to draw before he could speak. Picasso studied the works and styles of many Spanish artists including Francisco Goya, El Greco, and Diego Velázquez. At the beginning of the 1900s, Picasso moved to Paris, France to open his own studio. He was lonely and depressed after the death of a close friend, which ignited what is now known as his “Blue Period”. A few years later, Picasso started the “Rose Period”, which introduced warmer colors to his works. Picasso is commonly known as the pioneer of Cubism, in which objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form; it is destructive and creative. Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world.

This last April the exhibition “Pablo Picasso: La Tauromàquia (Tauromachy)” was inaugurated at the Fundació Suñol. The exhibition presents the edition of the book, belonging to its own collection, that reproduces the manual La tauromaquia o arte de torear (Tauromachy or the art of bullfighting) by the bullfighter from the 18th century José Delgado (alias Pepe Illo) subsequently illustrated by Picasso with 26 aquatints on the inside and a drypoint on the cover.

Pablo Picasso.Tauromachy, 1959. The Goring

The book was published in 1959 by Gustau Gili, within his collection Ediciones de la Cometa, that evolved in parallel to the history of Picasso with Gili, which you can find information about in the exhibition “The Museu Picasso, 50 years in Barcelona”.

In the museum we have also had a long relationship with this work, of which we have an edition. Among others, we have held a travelling exhibition about bullfighting “Picasso. Bullfighting. Works from the collection of the Museu Picasso, Barcelona” that was in Tel Aviv until 2012.

The same publisher as Gustau Gili’s don

•