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  Barcelona & Modernity > About the Exhibition > Exhibition Highlights > Pablo Picasso
Bull Skull, Fruit, Pitcher, 1939
 
 
Image of Pablo Picasso<br><I>Still Life with Bull's Skull (Bulls Skull, Fruit, Pitcher), </I>1939 <br>Oil on canvas <br>65 x 92 cm <br>The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1985.57 <br>© 2006 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Pablo Picasso
Still Life with Bull's Skull (Bulls Skull, Fruit, Pitcher), 1939
Oil on canvas
65 x 92 cm
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1985.57
© 2006 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Pablo Picasso
Still Life with Bull's Skull (Bulls Skull, Fruit, Pitcher), 1939

Picasso painted this still life on January 1939, three days after Barcelona fell to the Nationalists.

He expressed his despair by conjuring up a bulls skull covered with decaying flesh, a reference to Spain and its bullfighting tradition. Skulls are also associated with the theme of momento mori, which urges contemplation of the inevitability of death. Yet in this scene, a flowering tree--perhaps a reference to the oak that miraculously survived the bombing of Guernica--sprouts from the tip of the skull's nose. Enveloped in a glowing halo of moonlight, the tree seems to express Picasso's hope for the eventual rebirth of democracy in Spain.

Page 21 of 21 | On the next page: Joan Busquets
Settee, 1899