Bull by Óscar Domínguez

Bull, by Óscar Domínguez.
Pencil and India ink on Japon paper.
France.
ca. 1950.
? 56 cm ; ? 44 cm.

This pencil and India ink drawing, signed by the artist, is part of a series of drawings and paintings on the theme of bullfighting that Tenerife-born Óscar Domínguez undertook in the late 1940s. Santa Cruz de Tenerife is famous for its bullfights.

Drawings and engravings by Óscar Domínguez can be found at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco.
Óscar Domínguez first encountered Parisian art circles in 1927, when he accompanied his father, a wealthy banana exporter from the Canary Islands, on a business trip to Paris. He taught himself drawing and painting. He moved to Paris in 1929, returning to the Canaries in 1933, where he organized a small exhibition of fifteen Surrealist paintings. In 1934, he made contact with André Breton, returned to Paris and officially joined the Surrealist group. It is said that he invented the decalcomania.

Sources
René Passeron, Histoire de la peinture surréaliste, Paris, 1968.
Cyril Brian Morris, Surrealism and Spain. 1920-1936, Cambridge, 1972.
Ian Chilvers and John Glaves-Smith, A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, Oxford, 2009.
Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Les Avant-gardes artistiques. 1918-1945, Paris, 2017.