Battling the Beast. The Bull in Spanish and Mediterranean Culture

The bull, an imposing animal with a massive build, simultaneously feared and revered, has been a cultic subject in Western civilization since ancient times. The peoples of the Mediterranean regarded the animal as the embodiment of courage, violence, masculinity, virility and royal power, and it held an especially significant role both in religious life and as a sacrificial animal in rites. Deities appearing in the guise of a bull or animals endowed with supernatural powers played important roles in ancient myths and legends. The stories of the rape of Europa, the Cretan bull and the half-human, half-bull Minotaur often appear on ritual objects and works of art, from antiquity through Renaissance and baroque art to the present day.

The tradition of bullfighting, which has always been controversial due to its sheer brutality, has links beyond Spain: it is still practised in southern France, Portugal and several countries of Latin America, while in Italy it was only brought to an end at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tradition of tauromaquia, which is valued as an independent art form and as a kind of spectacular performance, developed its present form in the eighteenth century when the closed arenas with circular floor plans and the toreadors practising the craft as an independent profession made their debut. The complex choreography, symbolism, southern, macho stance and glittering attire of the bullfighter that attracted large crowds provided excellent material for artists, who immortalised it in a series of engravings and paintings. The artists and writers that visited Spain regarded and captured the most diverse moments of the spectacular struggle between man and his opponent, the wild animal and the bull, as part of exotic folklore. In addition to depicting the painterly nature of the subject, some artists, such as Francisco de Goya, the defining genius of modern art, also expressed social criticism and their thoughts on human nature in their pictures. It was in their wake that the prominent Spanish and international artists of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries treated the theme of bullfighting and its characters in their works.

The exhibition can be viewed in the chamber hall on the first floor of the Collection of International Art after 1800 and is accompanied by a trilingual catalogue (Hungarian-English-Spanish).

Curator of the exhibition: Adriána Lantos, art historian

The exhibition was supported by the Embassy of Spain in Hungary and the Cervantes Institute.