Picasso was obsessed with bullfighting and it was a subject he examined throughout his career. In fact, the earliest surviving Picasso painting depicts a picador on a horse and was created when he was just eight years old. With a tame atmosphere, this youthful depiction is a world apart from the dramatic violence of 1952’s Bull and Picador. One can almost hear the bestial shrieks as a muscular bull spikes its horn into a horse’s underbelly while the picador atop the doomed equine simultaneously returns the curse by plunging his lance into the bull’s shoulder. Spectators to this sort of scene in reality would be awash in the echoes of a paso doble, a bold style of music synonymous with the dust and blood of the Spanish bullring. Like the music, Picasso too was tied to the drama of this gory sport, saying, “The life of the Spanish consists of Mass in the morning, the bullfight in the afternoon, and the whorehouse at night. What element do they have in common? Sadness.” In this arena, synonymous with elegant bravado, the violence of the heart is on full display.