Reviews

The very first painting by Pablo Picasso that was ever conserved was painted in Malaga when he was just eight years old, and there is a horse in it. Ever since then, and right into his old age, the horse appears again and again in Picasso’s work. He depicted everything symbolic, noble, grotesque, human and mythological about the beast.
In Picasso. Horses, the Museo Picasso Málaga provides a new look at the presence and meaning of these creatures in Picasso’s work, with over fifty artworks on display. Oil paintings, drawings and engravings, amongst other works, show the unique way the artist dealt with this subject and the various different forms in which he portrayed it. Curated by Picasso expert Dominique Dupuis-Labbé, the exhibition also includes two illustrated books, one of which dates from the 16th-century and contains drawings by Jan Straet, and the other by Francisco de Goya. An engraving by Goya is also on display. Visitors will also be able to see a selection of photographs showing the horses that were always present in the cities where Picasso spent his childhood and youth.

Photo: Jesús Domínguez © Museo Picasso Málaga

The works are grouped together according to different themes, such as the sketches he made in his youth, bullfighting, the circus, the horse as a mythological creature, and war, amongst others. Visitors will have the chance to view a fine selection of works which include outstanding drawings such as Boy leading a Horse (1906), Naked Horseman (1919), The Rape (1920, courtesy MoMA), and Bullfight (1934). As the curator Dominique Duppuis-Labbé explains, the highlights of the exhibition are Picasso’s works on paper, as most of the oeuvre in which he depicted horses was produced on this support.
Many of the artworks on display belong to private collections are have rarely been shown in public. Works from public collections have been lent by the Picasso Museum in Barcelona; the Musée Picasso and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the Tate Gallery, London; the University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection; MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Phillips Collection, Washington, amongst others.
 
The Picasso. Horses exhibition also includes the illustrated book Los proverbios (The Proverbs), by Francisco de Goya, whose engraving Una reina del circo (A Queen of the Circus), is also on show.  Alongside these is the illustrated book La caballeriza de Don Juan de Austria, (The Stables of Don John of Austria), based on 16th-century drawings by Jan Straet.

• This juxtaposition of classical art, with which Picasso was well acquainted, and modern art, allows visitors to establish interesting connections between the two ways of depicting the same figure. The exhibition also contains photographs of the cities in which the artist spent his childhood and youth, such as Malaga, Barcelona and Paris, where horses were an everyday part of life at a time when motorcars were not yet in widespread use and villages and cities were entirely dependent on the work of the thousands of horses that walked the streets alongside humans.