Image: Image rights managed by Museo Reina Sofía / © Sucesión Pablo Picasso
View source →Horse and Bull. Sketch for Guernica
Pablo Picasso, 1937 (May)
Technical Details
Medium
Pencil on paper
Dimensions
24.5 × 45.5 cm (9.6 × 17.9 in)
Style
Expressionism / Drawing
Decade
1930s
About This Work
Listed by the Museo Reina Sofía as Horse and Bull. Sketch for Guernica, this May 1937 drawing isolates two motifs that would become central to the finished mural. The compact pairing shows Picasso testing how animal forms could carry tension, movement, and emotional pressure before he resolved the wider composition.
The museum's Rethinking Guernica research index places the drawing in Paris in May 1937 among a group of forty-eight Picasso drawings catalogued in connection with Guernica. Its direct source record supports reading the sheet as an exploratory study rather than assigning the horse and bull a single fixed meaning.
Current Location
Museo Reina Sofía research archive, Madrid, Spain
Public Collection — Open to visitors
Visit museum website →Valuation & Provenance
2026 Estimated Value
Priceless / Not for sale
* Estimates are based on comparable auction results and market analysis. Not a formal appraisal.
Last Known Sale
No public auction record — held in permanent museum collection
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