The Bullfight

This panel is from the series Camacho’s Wedding, painted by Sert for one of the gala dining rooms in the luxurious Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.

In this panel Sert depicted the bullfight, one of the great themes of Spanish culture and one that inspired so many artists and writers. It would seem that he was not particularly interested in this subject, or at least there is no evidence to demonstrate it. On the other hand, it is clear that he appreciated the expressive power of the bullfight and that what most attracted him was its vitality, ancestral and folk quality and its “authenticity”. This was also a great period for bullfighting in Spain, partly due to the so-called Generation of ’27, which included numerous well-informed bullfighting enthusiasts who made it one of their preferred subjects.

Sert thus explores a classic theme in Spanish art that had interested Goya and which would also interest Picasso, his most famous fellow artist and friend. In contrast to those two artists, Sert not did depict the ring and the blood but rather focused on the nobility of the bull, undoubtedly motivated by the semi-private and celebratory nature of this decorative commission. The scene, which is potentially a tragic and dangerous one, given that the bulls are running loose and there are bodies on the ground, is not depicted as such. Rather, the emphasis is on the bull’s fire and spirit, a recurring concept in Sert’s output. The negative aspect of this theme is left to one side, as is a realist depiction. The action thus acquires a declamatory rather than a lifelike character that limits the image to the pictorial plane, without, however, reducing its powers of visual evocation.