1960 Plaza de Toros de Madrid
DESCRIPTION
This mid-century reprinting of a cartel (an announcement for a corrida or bull fight) from a real corrida that took place in Salamanca on 12 September, 1946 and incorrectly labels the event as having taken place in Madrid in a likely effort to sell an image of Spain.
From Salamanca to Madrid
The corrida this poster announces did happen, but not in Madrid. On Thursday, September 12, 1946, Ortega, Arruza and Vito fought in Salamanca. The genuine poster for that afternoon carries the Salamanca bullring’s name and artwork by Juan Reus. Vito did not confirm his rank at Madrid’s Las Ventas until October 3 of that year, a ceremony a real Madrid poster would normally have announced. Tuser’s version keeps the date, the hour and the three names, moves the event to the capital, and supplies new artwork.
Tuser and the Decorative Poster
José María Tuser Vázquez (1919–1986) of Barcelona was one of the most prolific painters of bullfighting subjects. He painted covers for the weekly El Ruedo for many years, along with posters, postcards and prints. He reportedly began painting carteles in 1947, the year after the date this sheet carries. Demand for bullfighting posters and prints in Barcelona grew with tourism on the Costa Brava in the 1960s and 1970s. Tuser posters in this format, dated to the 1940s for Barcelona, Córdoba, Madrid and Seville, circulate today. They appear to have been made for that decorative market rather than to announce real events, and this one was probably printed between the 1950s and 1970s. Its boxed notice forbidding reproduction sits, with some irony, on a poster that borrows another city’s corrida.
CONDITION
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