Juan Belmonte

Juan Belmonte was a Spanish bullfighter whose style transformed modern bullfighting. Rather than relying primarily on movement and distance, he stood unusually close to the bull and used controlled passes to create drama and apparent stillness.

Belmonte was a Spanish matador whose close, stationary style of fighting bulls helped transform twentieth-century bullfighting. His rivalry with Joselito became famous, and his later memoirs and public persona made him one of the most written-about figures in the history of the corrida.

Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon is also a highly personal critical history of modern bullfighting. Hemingway compares courage, artistry, fear and failure through bullfighters including Juan Belmonte and José Gómez Ortega, known as Joselito, while an argumentative dialogue with the fictional “Old Lady” allows him to challenge both admirers and opponents of the spectacle. Technical description, portraits, photographs and a glossary combine in an inquiry into ritual violence, spectatorship and the unstable boundary between skill and death.