Wednesday - December 28, 2011

 Picasso in Sydney

 In early December I was able to go to the Art Gallery of NSW to see the Picasso exhibit which consisted of 150 odd pictures and sculptures lent by the Picasso Museum in Paris. I was excited to see for the first time two pictures which I had never seen in the flesh before - "Minotauromachy" (1935) and "Massacre in Korea" (1951). [See my study guide on Picasso's war art for more info].

The "Minotauromachy" (1935) has many references to classical mythology and prefigures some of the imagery which we see a couple of years later in "Guernica" (1937): the bull, the injured horse, the girl/woman with the lamp, people in a window surveying the scene, etc.

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Compare with this compositional study for "Guernica"(1 May, 1937):

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The "Massacre in Korea" (1951) has robotic, futuristic soldiers lined up to shoot innocent women and children. 

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Picasso's debt to Francisco Goya's "Third of May", where invading French soldiers round up and execute citizens of Madrid after they rose up in opposition to the occupation of their city, is clear. [See my study guide on Goya for more info]

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