Minotaur1.0018

Minotaur1.0018_Picasso

ogcma@byu

ClCv241

Mastery

MythMatters

MoMA site
Ovid Met.

Pablo Picasso, "Minotauromachy" 1935, etching and engraving. Copy at right is MoMA 20.1947.

(Caution ML p. 603, which shows this piece but describes it with an entirely erroneous caption.)

W. Rubin, ed., Pablo Picasso: a retrospective (New York, 1980).

C. Zervos, Pablo Picasso, 33 vols. (Paris, 1932 - 1978)

P. Penrose & J. Golding, edd., Picasso in Retrospect (New York, 1973).

J. Runnqvist, Minotauros: en studie i forhallendet mellan ikongrafi och form i Picasso konst (Stockholm, 1959).

For beastial Minotaur, cf. OGCMA0667Minotaur_Watts

Surreal etching depicting a minotaur, horse, woman, child with flowers, and figures in distress, evoking "Guernica" themes

The Minotaur pursues a horse that carries a nude woman (a matador? with a sword pointed at the head of the horse that conveys her), and all stops suddenly as a small girl with a candle shines light on the scene. "The provocative scene, full of symbolic content, is difficult but not impossible to interpret." (MoMA)

Picasso used the Minotaur thematically and recurrently throughout his career, but especially during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The Minotaur's unspeakable beastliness becomes symbolic for the violent atrocities of that civil war.

Does the sailboat (on horizon between horse's tail and Minotaur's thigh) turn the "matador" into a sleeping Ariadne? If so, then the picture may narrate a fullness of Ariadne's involvement with Theseus. (Macfarlane)

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University and other contexts.
This resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.