Dying Bull by Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 2008

Pablo Picasso. Spanish, 1881-1973.

Dying Bull
1934
Oil on canvas

Accession # 1999.363.67

A sword penetrates the twisted mass of a dying bull in Picasso's depiction of a bullfight. One of about twenty works on the subject painted at his country home, the chateau de Boisgeloup, this picture and its preparatory drawing are the only ones that focus solely on the bull. Picasso's father took him to the bullfights in Malaga when he was only seven years old, and the spectacle became the subject of one of his earliest paintings (1889-90).

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.