Why is the weeping woman famous

The Weeping Woman is the last and most elaborate of the series. Formally dressed, as though at a funeral or other place of mourning, she represents the harrowing grief experienced by mothers, sisters and others, following the death of a loved one, especially during wartime. Picasso was extremely upset by the conflict, and painting this was a way of showing his protest and anger towards the situation.

She was also the only photographer allowed to document the successive stages of Guernica while Picasso painted it in The Weeping Woman Pablo Picasso, For me she's the weeping woman.

For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman And it's important, because women are suffering machines. Contact Us Terms of Use Links. All Rights Reserved. Toggle navigation Pablo Picasso. The Old Guitarist. From 8 June the drawings, while still highly stylised, are more naturalistic with descriptive details and the appearance of fleshy volume.

In a painting dated 22 June repr. Her hand has long pointed finger nails. On 4 July the weeping woman is shown repr. There followed a long gap in the exploration of the theme while Picasso holidayed in Mougins near Cannes in the South of France in August and September. During the summer the sombre tones of Guernica were replaced with a bright palette of yellow, pink, mauve and crimson in portraits of his companions at the Hotel Vaste Horizon, Mougins.

Penrose , p. After his stay at Mougins the obsession with Spain returned and Picasso took up and radically developed his earlier themes. In a large painting of the mother and child theme dated 26 September repr.

Later still, on 12 October, a drawing repr. The grief of the weeping woman had become bitter and cruel. Picasso became obsessed with the theme: from 12 to 18 October he painted nothing but weeping women and he returned to the theme the following week.

The drawings and paintings dated 13, 17, 18 and 24 October show him particularly absorbed in the iconography of the handkerchief. All the elements that Picasso had explored through the early summer and then developed in September and October were brought together in T The face combines a profile dominated by an angular nose outlined in black with a full-face depiction of the eyes.

The mouth is shown in a three-quarters view. This very distinctive design was first adopted by Picasso in several portraits of women made in the early s but did not become a distinctive feature of his work until the summer of Anthony Blunt argued that this mixed treatment of the face may have been inspired in part by eleventh-century Spanish apocalyptic drawings of the type discussed in a article published in Cahiers d'art Blunt , p.

Although the specific example that Blunt discusses - a manuscript depicting a woman's head in profile with both eyes on one side of the face - is not reproduced in the Cahiers d'art article, Blunt suggested that Picasso may have been familiar with such striking images.

It is also distinct from the curvilinear volumetric style employed in the sketches and etchings of early June. In T , and also in the paintings of 17 and 18 October repr. The hybrid facial structure of T is internally divided into planes of contrasting, vivid colour delineated in black and dark grey. A confusion of hands, mouth, teeth, handkerchief and tears in the centre of the face is painted predominantly in white and blue. Above, firm black and dark grey strokes describe the deeply furrowed brow, tilted eyebrows and staring eyes.

The eyes and eyelids are given extraordinary analytical attention. The eyebrows and lashes are depicted in a childlike fashion with thick individual strokes; the lids and sockets are depicted as capsized vessels from which tears cascade while the eyes are flung overboard. The eyes are seemingly tossed up, poised on the crests of the two white triangular forms describing the handkerchief and tears. From his earliest studies of the weeping woman theme in late May, tears and eyes are linked by trace lines see, for example, the two drawings of 24 May, repr.

Even before the introduction of tears Picasso combined the two in a tear-shaped eye in a sketch for the mother and child motif dated 20 May repr.

In T a large circular tear drop terminates a seemingly solid flow of tears from the subject's right eye, giving the eye and tear together the appearence of a soup ladel. In addition to this intensely focused, symbolic exploration of physical and mental distress, T also embraces more literal modes of description.

The subject's hair, which is represented in the childlike-style also used for the eyebrows and lashes, is painted with blues and mauves. However, the hair style itself, in which the hair is swept back and worn with a short fringe, is recognisably that of Dora Maar.

Other parts of the painting which appear to be more or less literal are the coat or jacket with its stitches, the hat with its purple flower and the domestic interior with striped wall paper and brown dado rail or skirting board. Of all the weeping woman paintings T is the most complex compositionally, the most heavily stylised, the most geometrically fragmented and the most highly coloured.

The first paintings of the weeping woman which were made in June are very different and are largely monochrome and curvilinear where as T is coloured and angular. In the paintings made after the summer break the orientation of the head, as in T , is to the right.

This may have been an indirect result of making etchings, a process in which the reversal of the image naturally occurs. Its planar structure anticipates the composition of the later work, and as in T , the handkerchief is gripped by both teeth and hands.

No single precursor combines all the elements brought together in T Furthermore, the brilliant and brash colouring of T was without precedent.

Its colour was not only shocking in itself but particularly powerful in being associated with grief. According to Roland Penrose:. The result of using colour in a manner so totally unassociated with grief, for a face in which sorrow is evident in every line, is highly disconcerting.

As though the tragedy had arrived with no warning, the red and blue hat is decked with a blue flower. The white handkerchief pressed to her face hides nothing of the agonised grimace on her lips: it serves merely to bleach her cheeks with the colour of death.

The principal model for most of the paintings of the weeping woman, including T , and for many of the graphics, was Dora Maar, Picasso's mistress from to Her features are recognisable in both drawings of 8 June and in most subsequent treatments. References to the artist's estranged wife Olga Koklova are also apparent in some works. Drawings of the weeping woman made in the last week of May and the first week of June also incorporate this screaming mouth and pointed tongue.

In particular, a drawing of 12 October repr. The features of both women dominated Picasso's work throughout the late s. Herschal Chipp , p. However, Dora Maar is recognisably the model for the majority of weeping women studies after 8 June, in which her distinctive physiognomy and dark hair are plainly discernable.

Dora Maar born , Henriette Theodora Markovitch, of Yugoslavian-French parentage was a painter and photographer who had been involved with the Surrealists and had been the companion of Georges Bataille. Intimacy followed and Picasso drew her for the first time, from memory, on 11 September repr. Zervos VIII , p.

In the autumn of and early spring of Maar became the chief model of his paintings of women, itself the dominant genre in his output in the years — Significantly, in all his depictions of her prior to her fusion with the weeping woman see, for example, Zervos VIII , nos.

It is probable that Dora Maar was instrumental in encouraging Picasso's increasing political awareness during this period. She was intellectually involved with a group of Surrealists committed to Popular Front policies and she was articulate and persuasive. Both Richardson and Pierre Daix Daix , p. New York exh. According to Maar, Picasso was entertaining Christian Zervos and his wife one afternoon when a photograph of the painting was urgently required for an edition of Cahiers d'art repr.

Picasso asked Maar to visit the studio and finish painting the horse's coat before taking the photograph. It was painted at the studio in rue des Grands Augustins and the background interior decor is entirely imagined. Maar sat briefly for a preliminary sketch whereabouts unknown. The heightened colour of the final compositon, the elaborate hat and the suggestion of heavy makeup applied to the face and the nail varnish evoke Maar's passion for elaborate dress and display.

Pierre Daix Daix , p. Maar recalls that she dressed according to the fashion of the day. It's the same way with the portraits I've done of Dora Maar. I couldn't make a portrait of her laughing. For me she's the weeping woman. For years I've painted her in torture forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me.

These sentiments are echoed by Richardson who quotes Picasso admitting his fear of Maar. Further iconographical sources have been cited as a means of explaining the expressive power of these portraits and the longevity of the theme in Picasso's work.

In particular, several commentators, including McCully and Chipp, have claimed that the emotional impact of the portraits is related to the Spanish religious cult of the Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady of Sorrows. According to Kaufmann, Picasso's use of images that closely refer to ancient cults, rituals and religion she cites Mithraism, the crucifixion and the bullfight came from a desire to enhance the emotional and psychological reality of his compositions.

Kaufmann argues that this fascination with primitive symbolism, shared by the Surrealist writers Michael Leiris, Georges Bataille, Robert Desnos, and frequently explored in the pages of Cahiers d'art , was the key to Picasso's relationship with Surrealism rather than any interest in Freudian methods of free association or dream interpretation.

Such studies notwithstanding, Dora Maar believes that the search for religious, iconographic sources is absurd and unnecessary in explaining Picasso's choice of a weeping woman as the personification of a nation's despair, given the paramount importance to him - in life and art - of the women with whom he lived.

According to Maar, T was a painting for which Picasso maintained a high regard. Of the works listed by Zervos as falling within the period mid to , Gedo notes that 67 per cent.

Some physiognomic details, invented as the weeping woman theme evolved, recur in unrelated works. The British Surrealist artist Roland Penrose purchased the painting from Picasso shortly after it had been completed in early November He later recalled:.