Pablo Picasso’s Jeu de la Cape (Bloch 1015), 1961, a lithograph that captures Picasso’s enduring fascination with bullfighting, a theme that permeated his work throughout his career. Here, he reduces the drama of the corrida to its essential gestures through bold, graphic mark-making.

The composition presents a bullfight scene rendered in swift, gestural strokes of black ink. At the center, a bull charges toward a matador who wields the cape (la cape) in a dramatic flourish. To the right, a picador on horseback is visible, his lance rising vertically in stark contrast to the horizontal energy of the arena.

The figures are outlined in loose, almost improvisational lines, giving the scene immediacy and vitality. Sparse marks in the background suggest a crowd or horizon line, anchoring the action within the arena. Picasso’s ability to convey movement with minimal strokes is on full display: the bull’s energy, the matador’s elegance, and the horse’s presence all emerge with clarity despite the sketch-like simplicity.

Executed as a lithograph, the work reveals Picasso’s mastery of drawing directly onto the lithographic stone or plate. The freedom of line in this medium allowed him to treat printmaking as an extension of his draftsmanship. The dynamic use of black on white paper emphasizes contrast, echoing the stark, theatrical atmosphere of the bullring.

The inscription at the lower left (5.3.61) marks the exact date of execution, underscoring Picasso’s habit of recording the temporal immediacy of his creative acts.

Jeu de la Cape reflects Picasso’s lifelong passion for bullfighting, which he regarded not only as spectacle but as a symbolic contest between life and death, grace and violence. Here, however, the scene is distilled into its most elemental gestures: the swirling motion of the cape, the force of the bull, the poised stance of the matador.

Rather than dramatizing gore or violence, Picasso emphasizes the ritualistic beauty and rhythm of the corrida. The matador’s cape becomes a metaphor for artistic creation itself—a gesture that channels danger and transforms it into art.

Jeu de la Cape (Bloch 1015), 1961, is a lithograph by Pablo Picasso depicting a bullfighting scene. Executed in gestural black strokes, the work portrays a matador with cape, a charging bull, and a mounted picador, distilling the energy of the corrida into bold, expressive lines. Signed and dated, the lithograph exemplifies Picasso’s mastery of lithography and his lifelong fascination with bullfighting as a symbol of vitality, ritual, and artistic creation.