Picasso – Minotauromaquia – Etching – 19 x 27 in.
Those who were paying attention in 1935 knew that it was a dark year. The economic catastrophe of the Great Depression raged throughout the world. Josef Stalin killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow Russians and deported millions more. In Italy the Blackshirts crushed any opposition to Mussolini. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles Hitler began rearming Germany. His Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their citizenship. In Spain, generals in the army began plotting to overthrow the Republic.
Those who were paying attention also intuited that 1935 was a tremor, a shadow of a bleaker darkness yet to come. In 1936, Franco and the Spanish generals staged a coup d’état; the resulting civil war would not end until 1939. Hitler’s armies invaded Poland in that same year and began constructing the death camps to which in 1942 he began deporting Jews, gays, Blacks, the disabled and other perceived threats to his regime.
In Picasso’s print of 1935, all the figures, except one, are paying attention. A half-human/half-beast is hungry. Two women gaze at a dove. A man tries to escape up a ladder. A girl-child confronts the monster with her innocence. A beautiful matador lies asleep on a panicked horse, unaware of the menace around her.
Ninety years after 1935, another darkness and other monsters are everywhere. Even here in the United States of Amnesia. I have a dream: The girl awakens the woman and shares the light and flowers. They make a bridle, mount the horse together and challenge the beast. It drops its sword. The women break the blade into bits.
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