Tauromaquia: Face to Face with the Bull
Jnauary 2, 2012 -An exhibition of paintings of bullfighting by masters such as Picasso, Dali, and Goya.
The Municipal House is currently hosting an unusual exhibition of works of art dedicated to a common theme: the bullfight. Tauromaquia: Face to Face with the Bull features works by some of the world's greatest artists, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Francisco Goya, as well as legends of the Czech interwar art scene (Emil Filla, Karel Čapek). The exhibited works offer a vivid and fascinating testimony of this controversial theme, provide an extraordinary aesthetic experience, and convey the atmosphere of an inherent feature of Spanish culture.
For many of the artists, the bullfight is more than a passionate spectacle of man versus animal. For Francisco Goya, for instance, it represented a tool through which he could express his political ideas. The exhibition will present the complete series of Goya’s LaTauromaquia (The Bullfight) etchings, one of his most famous series.
Pablo Picasso, who was influenced by Goya, used the bullfight as an instrument of struggle against the dictatorship of General Franco. For example, he used bullfight imagery to draw the world's attention to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. Exhibition visitors will be treated to more than twenty of Picasso’s pen drawings of bullfights and 38 ceramic works, as well as the preparatory "Carton du Guernica", which has the same dimensions as his famous anti-war painting..
Czech artists, too, used the bullfight to depict resistance to Fascism. On a trip through Spain, Karel Čapek wrote "The bullfight is about the struggle between man and animal, essentially as old as time itself; it has all the beauty of combat, and also all its pain."
Tauromaquia runs until 9 April 2012 at the Municipal House on náměstí Republiky. More information is available at Tauromachie.cz.
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