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On having moved to Vallauris, Picasso re-discovers the ceramics, after realizing the first essays with Paco Durrio, the friendly Basque ceramist of Gauguin, who had introduced him for the first time in the skills of the ceramics in the first years of the XXth century in his study of Paris. |
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THE TAUROMACHY IN THE CERAMICS OF PICASSO
 i for Rafael Alberti, the of Malaga painter Pablo Ruiz Picasso was “el beam that does not stop ” for Gómez de la Serna was “el toreador of the painting ”, for his passion like brilliant artist and like good Andalusian, for our National Holiday.
As through an allegory of the love and the death Picasso lived the topic of the bulls. As a singular obsession where it was capturing his fears, his wishes and his fantasies that were swarming for his vitality like man and in his inabarcable imagination as artist. An origin that can be in his earliest childhood when, in Malaga, of the hand of his father, José Ruiz - Basque of birth, painter and teacher of drawing - acudìa to the Bullring of The Malagueta to be enjoyed of the chores, between others, of the legendariosMazzantini and Lounge-lizard.
Numerous bullfighting scenes are present in his first drawings that are not but memories of his visits to The Malagueta and that remained fixed in his retina along all his life. An example is the dramatic art vision of the horses destroyed by the gorings. Motive reproduced and re-interpreted in multiple works and that reaches his presence in the famous person “Guernica ” (1937).
For the painter Antonio Saura “del clash of the bull with the horse is the result that there motivates, of this terrible meeting, a pictorial investigaón that offers us the most tragic vision of the affectionate act ”. It is also Saura who affirms that “el climax of the tauromachy picassiana was the pictorial work realized between 1933-34 ”, years that his passion for the bulls leads to Picasso to travel to Spain and to cover the principal squares.
According to account Andrè Malraux, Picasso he was affirming that “la life of the Spanish consists of going to mass in the morning, to the bulls in the evening and to the brothel in the night. Which is the common element?: The sadness. ”
TOREADOR'S GARMENT
The brilliant Andalusian never stopped being present at the bullfights, from his native Malaga, even to the last ones that it came, already in the exile, in the French squares of Nîmes or Arlès. Picasso ambién has dressed himself of toreador, like Goya. It has had friendly toreadors, like Luis Miguel Dominguín. And, for the bulls, his friendship was born with Eugenio Arias, Spanish, republican and his favorite barber during his residence in Vallauris, in French Midi. A friendship that would be supported up to the death of the artist. They were present together at many bullfights and many were the experiences and anecdotes that they led.
![Small plate with bullfighting topic. Museum d`Art Moderne. Ceret. [France]](images/picassop2.jpg)
In the course of a bullfight that two friends were attending, a horse-trainer offered to him the task to the of Malaga painter, throwing his hat. Picasso returned it to himself with a drawing that had improvised during the course of the same one. On having finished the bullfight, the horse-trainer mentioned to Eugenio Arias that one of the toreadors who were intervening in the holiday had offered him, nothing more and neither more nor less, that fifty five-peseta coins for his hat. Arias advised him to recover it because it had done a bad business. Years later, they turned to find and the horse-trainer was grateful to him ardently for the advice that had given to him, since thanks to the hat he could have bought a house.
The versatility of the bullfighting world allows to Picasso to channel his wealth of creative energy and his prodigious talent like artist, expressing his more close friend “alter ego ”, that there is the one who dares to affirm, that it is the bull like movement of the violence, the sex, the love and the death. A conceptualidad and a subject-matter that is translated in infinity of paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings and ceramics, like more reliable testimony of the fascination that this brilliant creator of the XXth century felt and expressed for our National Holiday.
CERAMICS AND BULLS
Two bulls were also his first ceramic works. It was in 1946, in Vallauris, visiting an exhibition of regional products, like Sunday distraction, when it had his first contact and remained seduced by the mud. It covered the exhibition and, from the beginning, it showed his curiosity for the work of the workshops of pottery that were taking part, until it could not resist to the temptation of so material nobleman realizing three unexpected pieces: a faun and two bulls.
This way it began the big adventure of Pablo Ruiz Picasso with the ceramics. He devoted himself to her completely, turning into a fecund production that accompanied him up to his death, in 1973. There indicates Georges Ramié, whose workshop was receiving the ceramic creativity of the painter: ” And from this moment, thanks to the prestige of the work that Picasso would realize, the ceramics considered till then like a minor art, it began knowing an unsuspected supremacy up to this moment and universally accepted ”.
![Bull formed for elemntos turned and assembled. Museum Picasso. Antibes. [France]](images/picassoe4.jpg)
The tauromachy is, probably, the most extensive subject-matter in the production of plates of ceramics, although also it is present in sculptures, turned and assembled pieces, tiles, vessels, badges, pitchers, sources, tiles or bowls. Picasso captures all the lucks of the holiday of the bulls in the multiple possibilities that offers him the ceramic way. It expresses in him, across his brilliant description of the instántaneo, the whole emotion and intensity of the bullfights.
Under the auspices of the painter, Vallauris also had his square and his periods. Account Ramié that “el on Sunday, in the evening, a very honorable cartel was announcing sometimes to famous toreadors that they had gone to visit the painter and to produce homage. Then one was present at a bullfight simulacrum with the appearance of an amateur bullfight of people, for major pleasure of Picasso that, as it is logical, was in the presidency. Young truancies were fought both by the invited toreadors and by gentlemen in square who were doing it to the Portuguese, but with inoffensive lance... ”
IDEAL SUPPORT
Represented in multitude of ceramic supports, it is in the oval plates where better it is possible to appreciate the personal perception picassiana of the national holiday, in a few sugerentes perspectives of the interior of the bullring in full celebration of a bullfight in the hem and replete with public.
![Hexagonal tile with bullfighting topic. Museum of Ceramics of Barcelona. [Spain]](images/picassoa3.jpg)
Before the copious presence of scenes of the bullfighting world in the ceramics of the of Malaga artist, it would not belong to justice to allude to the tauromachy picassiana without bearing in mind, although it has taken place with discontinuity, the excellent attention that Picasso dedicated to this way of plastic expression and that cost him of ideal support in which capturing his inexhaustible inspiration.
As he was saying the proper artist: ” I do not look..., find ”. And it found, without looking for it, in the centenary workshop of the family Ramié the ideal environment where to impregnate his artistic worry of water, air and fire, three essential elements to transform the mud into original works of art, infinity of them inspired by the bulls.
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Ramón Salarich
Art and Market |
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