Pablo Picasso’s Bacchanale au toro (Bacchanalia with a Bull), 1959, is a masterful linocut that fuses the vitality of myth, ritual, and spectacle into a single, commanding image. In this work, Picasso draws upon the ancient tradition of the Bacchanalia—celebrations of Dionysus marked by revelry, music, and ecstatic abandon—and unites it with the enduring Spanish motif of the bull, a creature he revered as both symbol and adversary throughout his career. Executed with the economy and daring that define his linocut period, the composition unfolds in a dynamic interplay of figures and forms, where dancers, musicians, and the monumental bull share the stage of a timeless festival.

The figures, carved with strong, fluid lines, radiate energy and rhythm, their gestures evoking both ritual movement and sensual release. The bull, central and immovable, anchors the scene with its imposing presence, a force of nature around which human exuberance swirls. The stark contrast of black ink and untouched paper heightens the drama, while the compressed arrangement of forms creates a sense of both chaos and harmony—an echo of the tension between the wild and the ordered, the sacred and the profane.

With Bacchanale au toro, Picasso elevates the linocut medium into a stage for mythological grandeur. It is a vision where antiquity and modernity converge, where the exuberant spirit of the bacchanal meets the primal power of the bullfight. The work reflects Picasso’s enduring fascination with life’s dualities—ecstasy and mortality, celebration and struggle—captured with a graphic clarity that remains both timeless and profoundly modern.

Created in 1959, Pablo Picasso Bacchanale au toro (Bacchanalia with a Bull), 1959 is a color linocut on Arches paper hand-signed by Pablo Picasso (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, 1973) in pencil in the lower right margin. Numbered from the edition of 50 in pencil in the lower left margin, this work was published by Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:
Pablo Picasso Bacchanale au toro (Bacchanalia with a Bull), 1959 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the final sale of the work):

1. Baer, Bridgette. Picasso Peintre-Graveur, Tome V – Catalogue Raisonné de l’œuvre grave et des monotypes, Berne: Editions Kornfeld, 1989. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 1264.
2. Bloch, Georges. Picasso Catalogue de l'ouvre gravé et lithographié, Volume I. Kornfeld et Cie: Switzerland, 1968. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 933.
3. McVinney, L. Donald, et al Picasso Linoleum Cuts: The Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kramer Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Random House, 1985. Listed and illustrated as catalogue raisonné no. 37.
4. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany our Pablo Picasso’s Bacchanale au toro (Bacchanalia with a Bull), 1959.

About the Framing:
Framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, Pablo Picasso Faune et chèvre (Faun and Goat), 1959 is presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.