© Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid 2022
The sculpture Bull's Head was created by the artist Pablo Picasso in the spring of 1942 in his studio in the Rue des Grands-Augustins. It is a sculpture made from everyday objects: the union of a handlebar and a bicycle saddle.
The genius of this sculpture consists in joining two objects without either of them losing their original form, producing a third object far removed from its original function. An exercise in uncertainty in representation that allowed the artist to take a stand against the imposition of painting as a simple imitation of reality.
Despite employing a resource similar to Duchamp's ready-made works, they are, for Eduardo Vallés, conceptually different proposals: Picasso produces an object of great figurative force through the recontextualisation of different objects that are perfectly recognisable, even in the bronze reproduction. As in the collages or other sculptures with waste material, these are pieces that show the artist's extraordinary knowledge of the nature of objects.
The original work, with the assembled leather and metal objects, can be found in the Museé national Picasso-Paris. Two bronze copies were made and one of them belongs to the Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Foundation for Art, currently on loan to the Picasso Museum in Malaga.
This is one of the artist's most important sculptural works. Through his particular ingenuity he transports us to another reality which, in this case, is related to a bull's head. It is well known that bullfighting is one of Pablo Picasso's favourite themes.