“He’s studying her, trying to read her thoughts … trying to decide whether she loves him because he’s a monster … it’s hard to say whether he wants to wake her or kill her.”
—Pablo Picasso 

ⁱ

Picasso shared this thought while showing Minotaure carressant une dormeuse to his soon-to-be lover Françoise Gilot in 1943. He neglected to mention to Gilot that the sleeping woman pictured in the etching was inspired by Marie-Thérèse Walter, his former lover and the mother to his child. Walter’s striking profile and oval face recurs throughout the Vollard Suite, the collection of 100 etchings that marked the pinnacle of Picasso’s printmaking up to that point. Named for the wealthy patron and publisher, Ambroise Vollard, the Vollard Suite has no narrative throughline, but remains connected through a constellation of related themes, chiefly among them the Minotaur, which Picasso adopted as a visual persona beginning in the 1930s. Another common theme in the Vollard Suite is the line between intimacy and violence; when art historian Hans Bollinger devised an order for the Vollard Suite in the mid-1950s he titled this grouping The Battle of Love. Minotaure Ccarressant une dormeuse is both tender and threatening, capturing a moment of tension that offers a view into the artist’s inner world.

Picasso’s work often contains a confessional element. Speaking to Gilot, Picasso once remarked “I paint the same way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal…”ⁱⁱ Picasso had the habit of marking his works much like journal entries, inscribing them with the precise day, month, and year of their creation. In Minotaure carressant une dormeuse, Picasso goes a step further in specifying the location of its making, writing Boisgeloup in the lower left corner to reference his château and studio in Normandy. 

The minotaur as a representative of unbridled virility recurs throughout the Vollard Suite, both as the victim of murder and the perpetrator of violence. “You know, in my love affairs there has always been a lot of gnashing and suffering: two bodies entangled in barbed wire, rubbing against each other, tearing themselves to bits,” Picasso once told surrealist poet Paul Éluard.ⁱⁱⁱ 

Minotaure carressant une dormeuse also speaks to Picasso’s ongoing engagement with classical themes. The legend of the minotaur, given newfound attention in Picasso’s time through archaeological discoveries in Crete, had special resonance with Picasso as both a representation of man’s animal nature and as the fighting bull of his native Spain. The Minotaur as theme fits nicely with the Grecian busts, Athenian daggers, and curls of trailing ivy that Picasso incorporates elsewhere in the Vollard Suite.

The Vollard Suite incorporates several references to Rembrandt, perhaps the greatest etcher in the history of art. In Minotaure carressant une dormeuse, Picasso incorporates Rembrandt’s dramatic hatched shadows and sketch-like detailing, even echoing one of his compositions, the 1659 etching Jupiter and Antiope. Picasso told Gilot that Rembrandt ‘haunted’ him, later saying, “Every painter takes himself for Rembrandt… Everybody has the same delusions.”^iv

Minotaure carressant une dormeuse offers a glimpse of the complicated relationship between one of the greatest artists of the 20^th Century and the woman who would inspire many of his masterpieces across mediums. Delicately balancing between human and animal impulses, romance and violence, this etching embodies the internal debate Picasso channeled through the minotaur and captures the flawed artist in all his complicated glory.

ⁱ Françoise Gilot, Life With Picasso, 1964, p. 44.

ⁱⁱ Ibid., p. 118.

ⁱⁱⁱ John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, 2007, p. 329.

^iv Françoise Gilot, Life With Picasso, 1964, p. 45.