| With his fifth preparatory sketch, Picasso resurrects the horse from his corridas. Apart from the childlike rendering that preceded it, this is the first time the horse appears in the preparations by itself. The dark line across the horse's side is Picasso's memory of the heavy bull. To be sure, this horse is strikingly similar to one Picasso painted in a corrida nine years earlier, collapsing by the force of puncture and weight, its lagging head still turned towards the belligerent beast. Picasso knows exactly how to express the agony of the horse with its head and neck, but he has never needed to do the same with its entire body, since the bull has always covered it. Moreover, the corrida horse's understated eyes and mouth together express an agony incompatible with the unprecedentedness of the bombing: this horse is not surprised that it is dying. |
