Toro By: Robert McPartland

One of several compositions with curls of paper in brief, precarious arrangements, in this case white on a black ground. The curls fell into an arrangement that suggested the simplified head or skull of a bull, which in turn reminded me of Picasso’s play with bicycle parts to metamorphose a sculpture of a bull’s head. I love the spareness of the work of Sanchez Cotan, Zurbaran and other Spanish Baroque painters, the Vanitas still life genre and the dark quality of Duende in Spanish Flamenco music and dance. The painting a sort of homage to the Spanish creative spirit; a vanitas, a meditation on masculinity and fragility.