side Picasso would support, and as Franco’s victory became inevitable, his state of mind was anguished. He shared his fears and anxieties in conversations with Zervos and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, but these feelings were less intimately self-directed than before. Worried about the fate of his family in Barcelona and his native country in general, Picasso increasingly moved from the introspective world of the Minotaur works to images dealing with the political situation and issues of more general interest, although always—as in Guernica, his magnum opus of 1937—through the lens of his personal life. 1 See E. Tériade, “En causant avec Picasso,” L’Intransigeant, June 15, 1932, pp. 27–28, and Jean Leymarie’s introduction to Picasso e il Mediterraneo, exh. cat. (Rome: Edizioni dell’elefante, 1982), pp. 19, 20. 2 See David Douglas Duncan, Picasso’s Picassos: The Treasures of La Californie (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), p. 111. The literature on Picasso and his fascination with the Minotaur is voluminous. I have consulted the following works in my research for this paper: Marie-Laure Bernadac, “Il Minotauro,” in Picasso e il Mediterraneo, p. 153; Bernadac, “1933–1940, du Minotaure a Guernica,” in Bernadac, Brigitte Léal, María Teresa Ocaña, eds., Picasso: Toros y Toreros, exh. cat. (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1993), p. 147; Marc Le Bot, “Minotauromachie,” in Arc no. 62 (1981):30–34; Elinor W. Gadon, “Picasso and the Minotaur,” India International Centre Quarterly 30, no. 1 (Summer 2003):20–29; Hélène Lassalle, “Picasso et le mythe antique,” in Philippe Hoffmann, Paul-Louis Rinuy, and Alexandre Farnoux, eds., Antiquités Imaginaires. La Référence antique dans l’art modern, de la Renaissance à nos jours, in Etudes de Littérature Ancienne 7 (Paris: Presses de l’École normale supérieure, 1996), pp. 221–42; Steingrim Laursen, “Picasso und die Mythen,” in Ortrud Westheider, Picasso und die Mythen (Bremen: H. M. Hauschild, 2002), pp. 24–26; Paloma Esteban Leal, “Picasso Minotauro,” in Picasso Minotauro, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2000), pp. 223–30; Juan Malpartida, “Mitos, evolucón y la imaginación de Picasso,” in Fundación Picasso, Picasso. El Minotauro en su laberinto, exh. cat. (Malaga: Ayuntamiento de Malaga, 2014), p. 39; Takanori Nagai, “Picasso and the Minotaur,” in Picasso: The Love and the Anguish—the Road to Guernica, exh. cat. (Kyoto: National Museum of Modern Art, 1995), pp. 347–52; Josep Palau I Fabre, From the Minotaur to Guernica, 1927–1939, ed. Julià Guillamon (Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2011), pp. 11, 15, 145; Juan Carrete Parrondo, “La Minotauromaquia. Picasso entre lo Apolineo y lo Dionisiaco,” in Fundación Picasso, Picasso. El Minotauro en su laberinto, pp. 15–21; Curt von Seckel, “Picassos Wege zur Symbolik der Minotauromachie,” and Valérie-Anne SircoulombMüller, “The Minotaur and Minotauromachy or In Search of an Alter Ego in Picasso’s Imaginary Labyrinth,” in Markus Müller, ed., Pablo Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter: Between Classicism and Surrealism (Bielefeld: Kerber Verlag, 2004), pp. 45–57; Sylvie Vautier, “Picasso’s Minotaur: A Myth Too Human,” in Picasso Minotauro, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2000), p. 240; and Ortrud Westheider, “Im Bann des Minotaurus,” in Picasso und die Mythen, pp. 148, 149. 3 “Si on marquait sur une carte tous les itinéraires par ou j’ai passé, et si on les reliait par un trait, cela figurerait peut-être un Minotaure.” Quoted in Dor de la Souchère, Picasso in Antibes (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), p. 54. Also quoted by Leymarie in his introduction to Picasso e il Mediterraneo, pp. 19, 20. 4 See Ellen Young, The Slaying of the Minotaur: Development of the Myth, 700–400 b.c., PhD thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1972, pp. 128, 169, 172, 174. Other publications addressing this Mediterranean myth include Laursen, “Picasso und die Mythen”; André Siganos, Le Minotaure et son mythe (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993); and Theodore Ziolkowski, Minos and the Moderns: Cretan Myth in Twentieth-Century Literature and Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 5 Malpartida, “Mitos, evolucón y la imaginación de Picasso,” p. 39. See, for example, the Attic red-figure terra-cotta columnkrater from c. 460 b.c. in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 6 Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos (London: Macmillan, 1921, 1928A, 1928B, 1930, 1935A, 1935B, 1936). See also Marguerite Yourcenar, “Aspects d’une légend et histoire d’une pièce,” Théâtre II (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), pp. 165–79. 7 See Esteban Leal, “Picasso Minotauro,” p. 229, and Vautier, “Picasso’s Minotaur,” p. 248. 8 Lassalle, “Picasso et le mythe antique,” p. 223, Ziolkowski, Minos and the Moderns, pp. 70, 72, 82, and Yourcenar, “Aspects d’une légend,” p. 166. André Masson and Man Ray were among the artists who produced works featuring the Minotaur. 9 See Gérard Regnier, Picasso and Greece, exh. cat. (Andros: Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, 2004), p. 198. On the influence of Cahiers d’Art see Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), p. xi, and Ziolkowski, Minos and the Moderns, p. 75.
10 See Colette Giraudon, “The Thirties, or the Culture of Unease,” in Müller, ed., Pablo Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter, p. 25. 11 The covers of the ensuing issues figured bulls or the Minotaur by, among others, André Derain, Henri Matisse, René Magritte, André Masson, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Salvador Dali, André Masson, and Diego Rivera. 12 Palau I Fabre, From the Minotaur to Guernica, pp. 144, 145. 13 Picasso was commissioned to produce the etchings in 1930. He worked extensively on the set in the spring of 1933 and completed it in 1937. The death of Ambroise Vollard in 1939, and the advent of World War II, meant that the prints started coming onto the art market only in the 1950s. Picasso’s sculptures saw a sudden surge of interest and were published in Minotaure magazine in June 1933, in photographs by Brassaï. See Elizabeth Cowling, Picasso: Style and Meaning (London: Phaidon Press, 2002), p. 544, and Cowling, “The Image of Picasso—Sculptor in the 1930s,” in John Richardson and Diana Widmaier, Picasso: L’Amour Fou (New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2011), pp. 257–91. 14 See Christian Zervos, Cahiers d’Art nos. 7–8 (1931):369. 15 Laursen, “Picasso und die Mythen” p. 24; Ziolkowski, Minos and the Moderns, p. 165; and Leymarie’s introduction to Picasso e il Mediterraneo, p. 22. 16 Picasso, quoted in Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 43–44. 17 See Jean Clair, “Motifs mithraiques et allegories chrétiennes dans l’oeuvre de Picasso,” in Picasso: Sous le soleil de Mithra, exh. cat. (Martigny: Fondation Pierre Gianadda, 2001), pp. 15–28; Dominique Dupuis-Labbé, “L’Arène, lieu de l’amour et du sang,” in ibid., pp. 29–32; Pierre Daix, La Vie de peintre de Pablo Picasso (Paris: Seuil, 1977), p. 248; and Sircoulomb-Müller, “The Minotaur and Minotauromachy,” p. 45. 18 Georges Bodaille and Luis Miguel Dominguín, Picasso: Toros y Toreros (Paris: Éditions cercle d’art, 1993), p. 14, and Keizo Kanki, “The Road to Guernica,” in Picasso: The Love and the Anguish, p. 323. 19 See Ocaña, “Picasso and the Bulls,” in Picasso: The Love and the Anguish, pp. 340–42. 20 See Michel Leiris, L’Âge d’homme (1939), Miroir de la Tauromachie (1937), and, earlier still, La Grande Fuite de neige (1926); and Georges Bataille, L’Érotisme, 1957, in Oeuvres Completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 10:24. See also SircoulombMüller, “The Minotaur and Minotauromachy,” p. 52. 21 E. Tériade, “En causant avec Picasso,” L’Intransigeant, June 15, 1932, pp. 27–28. 22 Vautier, “Picasso’s Minotaur,” p. 241, Parrondo, “La Minotauromaquia,” p. 21, and Palau I Fabre, From the Minotaur to Guernica, p. 261. 23 See Bernadac, “Il Minotauro,” p. 164. 24 In La Minotauromachie de Pablo Picasso (Geneva: Patrick Cramer, 1987), p. 5, Sebastian and Herma C. Goeppert call La Minotauromachie one of the chef d’oeuvres of all graphic art. See also François Lachenal, ed., Pablo Picasso. Maler, Grafiker, Bildhauer, Keramiker, Dichter, exh. cat. (Ingelheim am Rhein: Stadt Ingelheim, 1981). 25 Romain Rolland’s two plays, “Le Quatorze Juillet” and “Danton,” are published together in one volume in both French and English: in French, Théatre de la Revolution: Le 14 Juillet—Danton—Les Loups (Paris: Albin Michel, 1926), and in English, Two Plays of the French Revolution, trans. Barret H. Clark (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918). See Gertje R. Utley, Picasso: The Communist Years (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 15, 16. 26 Gilot and Lake, Life with Picasso, p. 50. 27 See Dupuis-Labbé, “L’Arène, lieu de l’amour et du sang,” in Picasso: Sous le soleil de Mithra, pp. 29–32.
Opposite, top: Pablo Picasso, Minotaure et jument morte devant une grotte face à une fille au voile, May 6, 1936, India ink and gouache on paper, 195⁄8 × 25 5⁄8 inches (50 × 65 cm), Musée Picasso, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY Opposite, bottom: Pablo Picasso, Étude pour La dépouille du Minotaure en costume d’arlequin (Rideau de scène pour Le quatorze juillet), May 28, 1936, India ink and gouache on paper, 17 ½ × 21 3⁄8 inches (44.5 × 54.5 cm), Musée Picasso, Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY
Above: Pablo Picasso, La fin d’un monstre, December 6, 1937, pencil on paper, 15¼ × 22 1 ⁄8 inches (38.6 × 56.3 cm), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Photo Courtesy Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, purchased with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Art Fund 1995 Artwork © 2017 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
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