The Cock

Pablo Picasso, 1938

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About This Work

The Cock depicts a rooster in a state of aggressive display, with ruffled feathers and an open beak caught in mid-crow. Its compact 55 × 46 cm format concentrates attention on the bird’s charged silhouette and animated handling of paint. Rather than treating the animal as a simple farmyard subject, the expressionist approach gives the figure a heightened presence that can be read as defiant or alarmed. The work belongs to a late-1930s group of animal images in which direct observation and symbolic suggestion are held in deliberate tension.

Painted in March 1938, The Cock belongs to the period of Picasso’s intense engagement with the Spanish Civil War. The historical circumstances make the work’s aggressive animal imagery especially resonant, but its meaning should not be reduced to a single allegory. The rooster, a national emblem of France, may carry a patriotic association; the painting also preserves the ambiguity of an animal subject rendered with unusual emotional force. Tate’s collection context allows the work to be considered alongside Picasso’s wartime-period expressionist paintings.

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