Corridas

1997

This small suite of paintings, pastels, and small paintings on panel represents an attempt to portray the essential dynamism of the bullfight. I wanted to depict the black mass of the bull and the swirling colours of the matador as an abstract interchange of dynamic energies. I saw two bullfights, one in Madrid in 1958 and one in Portugal in 1971. In the Portuguese contest, they try to leap over the animal’s horns, wherein we see an echo of the bull-vaulting ritual of ancient Minoan Crete and even further back to the cult of the bull in Aurignacian cave art. These memories were stimulated again after seeing the posters for bullfights in southern France and also the many works of Picasso, who regularly used the corrida as a subject.

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