1st CORRIDA PICASSO during EASTER WEEK 2009 in MÁLAGA

La Malagueta, bullring Malaga

MALAGA TOWN HALL will celebrate PABLO RUIZ PICASSO with the FIRST CORRIDA PICASSO

With the opening of the PICASSO MUSEUM MALAGA in 2003, in the renovated Condes de Buenavista Palace, the Malaga Town Hall officially declarded the intention to recover, finally, the dominant figure of Pablo Picasso, the mitical and universal malagueño, the “Torero of Painting”, as an escencial part of the cultural tradition Malaga brought into Bullfights’ history.

Pablo Picasso in his studio

Over the last years the town’s Tourist Department organised a variety of events to promote the cultural and artistic image of the city, using work and life of the famous painter. All these events, exhibitions, theatre, concerts etc. created a clear and positive increase of tourism, visitors from in or outside Spain and every year more Mediterean cruises stopping in the port of the capital of the Costa del Sol.


José Tomas, Francisco Rivera Ordóñez, Manuel Díaz ‘The Cordobes’, Javier Conde and Castella

The latest news on the ‘Malaga and Picasso’-front is undoubtably the agreement, signed in November of last year, between Malaga Town Hall and the managment of the Malaga Bull Ring (Plaza de Toros), to organize the 1st CORRIDA PICASSO. This bullfight will take place next 11th and 12th of April 2009, in the middle of Malaga Easter Week (Semana Santa), usually the start of tourist’s high season.

José Tomas



On Saturday the 11th of April the Taurino weekend will take off at the Malaga Plaza de Toros, with Manuel Diaz “The Cordobes”, Castella and the allround popular Francisco Rivera Ordóñez, member of the famous bullfighter’s dynasty Ordóñez from Ronda.

Francisco Rivera Ordóñez

On Resurrection Day or Easter Sunday, the 12th of April, the incredible José Tomas and, from Malaga, Javier Conde will enter the ring to show their bullfighting skills.

Javier Condé



- PICASSO AND THE BULLFIGHT -



Picasso showed a burning passion for the bullfight and used that passion as a painter, as a human being and as a prisma to observe the world. In his work he displayed scenes from the corrida to explain other emotions like love, life, women, death or deceit. All the aspects of the corrida, the ring, the matador, bulls and horses are always highly present in the extensive work of malagueño artist, which dominated art in the 20th Century. All his life bullfight will inspire Picasso extremely and for a lot of professionals only he and GOYA know how to interpret the world of the corrida.

Picasso attending a Corrida


In 1935 Picasso had met the work of Goya, at the Prado Museum of Madrid, and especially his Tauromachia caught the artist’s attention and will even seduce him to copy it in a drawning. Also for the decoration or the illustration of books, Picasso will use scenes from the corrida and in a mature artistic moment he creates his “Minotauromachia”, a paiting, in line with his other works realized through the decade where he used the theme of the legendary Minotaur creature, that will bring him to the realisation of one of his most famous works: Guernica.

Tauromachia drawning by Picasso


In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a creature that was part man and part bull and inspired Picasso for a lot of years to mix divinity with terrenaty, spirituality with eroticism and the love with hate.




PICASSO, LUIS MIGUEL DOMINGUIN AND LUCIA BOSE

The artist’s fascination for the Corrida will surround him with a lot of influential personalities, like famous Toreros, for exemple. One of the most important friendships is undoubtably the relation between Picasso and Luis Miguel Dominguin, one of the main toreros from those days, and his wife Lucia Bosé, and italian actress residential in Spain.


















Picasso and the famous couple Dominguín-Bosé had met in Arles, south France, back in 1958, when the painter was acting in a film by french director Jean Cocteau, “The Testament of Orpheus”, together with Charles Aznavour, Françoise Sagan and Lucía Bosé.

Dominguin and Lucia Bose, with Deborah Kerr















Dominguin and Ava Gardner



Before, Dominguin had romances with the American actress Ava Gardner or fashion model China Machado but in 1955, he married actress Lucía Bosé, and they had 3 children: Paola, named after the big master Picasso, her godfather, Lucia and the spanish idol and singer Miguel Bosé. Some years later, in 1967, ex-miss Italia 1947 Lucia Bose will be the first woman in Spain to divorce officially from her husband, Luis Miguel Dominguín.

Antonio Ordóñez, bullring Ronda

By that time Dominguín was constantly engaged in the bullfighting rivalry between him and Antonio Ordóñez, grand father of Francisco Rivera Ordóñez and founder of the Corrida Goyesca anually celebrated in Ronda. Some of the confrontations between the two big matadors were chronicled by Ernest Hemingway in his book The Dangerous Summer and in some articles for the american magazine LIFE.

Antonio Ordóñez and Ernest Hemingway

"TOROS Y TOREROS"

In 1959 the mutual respect between the painter and the torero leads to the publication of ‘Toros and Toreros’, a book from Dominguín, with illustrations from Picasso and comments by George Boudaille and some years of deep friendship later Picasso will donate the Dominguín Family a series of figure drawings, oil painting, sculptures, copperplate etchings, ceramicas, etc. made between 1955 and 1965, all with the world of the corrida as inspiration point. This unique and private art collection has been shown in the best museums all around the world.

Picasso really adored the toreros, the bulls and their world and in a certain occasion, they say, Picasso confesed Dominguín that he’d rather had been Picador (horsemen in a bullfight that jab the bull with a lance) than a painter. Regarding to his respect for the Torero, the bullfighter, there is a very significant myth saying that one day Dominguín was in Picasso’s studio and, after have drawn or painted thousands of bulls in the past, the artist was not able the paint one in the presence of the Torero ...