Wounded Minotaur VI (Minotaure blesse VI) 1933

"Wounded Minotaur VI" by Pablo Picasso is rendered with quick, searching lines, like a pen trying to find its subject on the page. There is the bull-man, a mythical creature that embodies the raw and the refined, sketched in vulnerable repose. I imagine Picasso circling this figure, trying to understand the weight of its myth. What does it mean to be a beast with human eyes? Picasso’s line is so assured, yet it trembles with feeling. See how the face above watches the minotaur’s collapse? It is a great etching because Picasso is thinking through feeling, rather than illustrating it. You feel his sensitivity towards his subject. He, like other artists, is searching for new ways to see the old stories, the old feelings. We are all connected through time by this common pursuit.