Conclusively, if bullfighting symbols in the Guernica are interpreted using the ethos that Picasso first adopted when he began painting bullfighting scenes back in 1900, it is easy, as the first quote stated, for the “public to interpret” and understand the statement Picasso is trying to make about the tragic inevitability and helplessness of the townspeople of Guernica. It is important to note that Picasso made this bullfighting tinted statement among a multitude of others with this one painting using nothing but the interplay between symbols. He has no color contrasts like the pastels, or even portrays the actual bombing, but still communicates within all the ambiguity that comes with the many symbols the grief, pain, and horror of those three hours of destruction and betrayal.
If the evolution of the bullfight is traced through his career, it is easy to see how Picasso went from the almost impressionistic painter to the symbolist he is most famous for being. The gory bullfights in Malaga must have profoundly affected the impressionable mind of young Picasso. Already the fuzzy and ambiguous conceptions of good, evil, and sacrifice were taking the forms of a white and graceful horse and a dark and savage bull. The fact that Picasso chose the bullfight theme to make one of his grandest artistic statements shows how intimately his art and the bullfight are connected. Picasso even compares the excitement and pressures of creating art as:
Just imagine that you’re in the middle of the ring. You’ve got your easel and your white canvas and you’ve got to paint it, while the whole world is there watching you. Go to it, the moment has come, you’ve got to start on your canvas, you’ve got to do it. Imagine that, [Picasso] said. Nothing could be more appalling: ten or fifteen thousand people are there, watching you. If you make the least mistake, you die. (Cox, 46).
It is hard to look at the Guernica and not see a bullfight if Picasso’s history, and initial tendencies are taken into account. Picasso dared his viewers to see beneath his symbols, but by incorporating themes that were not novel to his art career he gave his audience direction and sign posts along the way to come to his or her own interpretation.
Above: Picasso, Pablo. "El Picador." 1889. Internet.
Below:Picasso,Pablo."sketchbook." 1890. “Guernica: Love, War, and the Bullfight. Art Journal. 1973).Vol 33. Issue 2: pg 100-115.