Pablo Picasso

(1881-1973)

Autograph letter signed ("Ahora un abrazo/ Tuyo Picasso"), to his friend the bullfighter 'El Minuni' ("Querido Minuni"),

Footnotes

'QUE ALEGRIA!' - PICASSO LOOKS FORWARD TO REUNITING WITH THE ANDALUCIAN BANDERILLERO 'EL MINUNI' AT THE NIMES CORRIDA.

Francisco Reina, 'El Minuni', was born in Tomares, near Seville, in 1910. Although he later on in life moved to the same street in Barcelona where Picasso was working, they had first met in Arles where Minuni, a successful bullfighter, was performing in the arena. The two became close friends, Picasso often referring to him as "mi hijo".

The letter dates from 1955, during a busy period which marked another transition in Picasso's artistic style, as he began looking back and reinterpreting the works of artists such as Goya, Poussin, Manet and especially Velázquez. The artist had just purchased La Californie, the villa in Cannes into which he moved with Jacqueline Roque, and had been commissioned to produce posters for the Vallauris bullfights. Photographs of the same year show Picasso and Minuni together in Nice, where the artist was collaborating with Henri-Georges Clouzot on the film Le Mystère Picasso, and Minuni as banderillero greeting Picasso during a bullfight that August in Vallauris, put on in Picasso's honour.

Later on Picasso was to show great generosity towards his friend, paying his hospital bills in 1963 after a serious injury ended the bullfighter's career, and then buying back (at full price) one of his own paintings after he had given it to Minuni; all this in order that Minuni could buy the bar he had set his heart on running near the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. By 1966 Munini was known to have amassed an important collection of his benefactor's works, and an interview with him by María del Carmen Sarrión was published under the title Minuni, el banderillero amigo de Picasso (Madrid?, El Alcázar, date unknown).