In 1958, Helen Frankenthaler attended a bullfight while on her honeymoon in Spain. This epic event pitting human against beast horrified, yet inspired her. In Frankenthaler’s depiction created shortly after the event, large swaths of paint mark the surface of the paper. There is an immediacy and violence to this work. While recognizable forms of the bull and matador may not emerge from the chaos, Frankenthaler’s emotions at seeing the experience come across in her expressionistic style. Frankenthaler’s painting recalls her visceral reaction to the bloodshed and overall violencen of the spectacle in a way that marries her application of paint with the subject matter. Since this work employs abstraction in place of representation, it is Frankenthaler’s gestural movement that transports viewers to the tense moment she remembered.