The expressive brutality of the animal’s bleeding, severed head in such flagrant contrast with the white cloth reminds us that the picture was painted in 1942, during the war. The thoroughly Cubist rejection of any three-dimensional effect eliminates the space between the window in the background and the bloody object, which thus tilts powerfully forward in distressing isolation. Picasso had painted another, more geometric, abstract version of this picture one month earlier, now at the Kunstsammlung, Düsseldorf.
The canvas was acquired, probably immediately after its execution, by Louise Leiris, wife of the poet Michel Leiris and owner of the famous Parisian gallery that managed to secure much of Picasso’s output during the Second World War.