Tauromaquia 1951

Oscar Dominguez painted this bullfight scene, Tauromaquia, with bold color and even bolder black lines. It’s like he’s saying, “Look, painting can be raw, graphic, immediate.” I imagine him wrestling with the canvas, trying to capture the drama and danger of the bullring. I bet Dominguez was thinking about Picasso's own bullfight paintings and how to do it differently. He's using color kind of like Leger, right? The Matador almost disappears as a figure, and it’s those juicy contours that really do the work, making this painting seem both representational and abstract at the same time. The bull is so muscular and full of rage. You can almost feel the tension in its body, ready to charge. Dominguez's use of thick paint and those confident lines reminds me that painting is an ongoing conversation, like one artist yelling something across the ring and another answering back with their brush. It's a constant push and pull of ideas.