Not on view

Minotaur Caressing the Hand of a Sleeping Woman with its Muzzle

Boisgeloup, June 18, 1933

Drypoint on copperplate, printed on paper

29.9 x 36.5 cm

Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso

The wealth of meanings the Minotaur has in Pablo Picasso’s art goes beyond the artist’s identification with the mythological creature and stands at an intersection of autobiographical, historical, psychological and artistic references. Three years after he produced this print during the months of April, May and June 1936, all Picasso’s writings contained references to the Minotaur as a monster, an indomitable beast or a winged bull.

‘in a goblet sleeves of a harlequin costume knotted around its stem the toro’s head expires embroiled in the scent of verbena and candles stand on a drum balanced by a prism’s deceptive stammer’.

Pablo Picasso’s writing, 6 June 1936. ROTHENBERG, Jerome and Pierre Joris (Ed.). Pablo Picasso. The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems. Cambridge: Exact Change, 2004, p. 118.

Woman with Raised ArmsStudy for Bust of a Woman with Arms Crossed Behind her Head. Royan Sketchbook (Sketchbook 202)

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‘Picasso first treated the theme of the Minotaur in a large charcoal and paper collage in 1928 (MNAM, Paris, Z.VII.135). The subject was one of several that he would develop for the Vollard Suite, a publication of one hundred prints, commissioned by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. From 1930 until 1937, Picasso worked on the images for this endeavour, which, among many subjects, included various representations of sleeping women and Minotaurs.

One section of the Vollard Suite is specifically devoted to the Minotaur. The series was made in 1933 and includes eleven prints, executed between 17 May and 18 June, of which the present drypoint etching is a part. The prints, often the result of combined intaglio techniques, depict the Minotaur with Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-1977) dancing and listening to music, drinking, sleeping, and making love. Sometimes they are alone; sometimes, in the presence of such figures as sculptors or models. In several scenes, an audience of women observes the defeated man/animal dying in an arena. A later series will focus on the tragic figure of the blind Minotaur.

The present print was pulled by Roger Lacourière from one of the eleven plates on the Minotaur theme in the Vollard Suite. Dated 18 June 1933, it is the last image of the sequence’.

Text: GIMÉNEZ, Carmen (ed).  Museo Picasso Málaga Collection. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2003, pp. 462-463.

1933