Weeping Woods

Lore & Background

Picasso created Weeping Woman during the Spanish Civil War, which broke out in July 1936, when General Franco revolted against the Republican government. It was part of a series of works in response to the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War on 26 April 1937. The bombing took place when Adolf Hitler ordered the German airforce to bomb the Basque town on behalf of Franco. The painting was a personal protest after seeing newspaper photographs of the event. In January 1937, Picasso had been asked to produce a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition. While he was working on the commission, the bombing of Guernica occurred. Picasso stated in the Springfield Republican on 18 July 1937, "In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death." The Weeping Woman series has been described as a postscript to Guernica.

In Their Own Story

During the creation of Guernica, Picasso made his first studies of a weeping woman on 24 May 1937, however, it was not to be included in the composition of Guernica. An image of the weeping woman was inserted in the lower right of the painting, but this was removed by Picasso, who considered that it would upstage the agonised expressions of the four women in the painting. Following the completion of Guernica, Picasso continued with his obsession for the weeping woman. Judi Freeman remarked that, "The one motif he could not relinquish was that of the weeping woman. Her visage haunted him. He drew her frequently, almost obsessively, for the next several months. She was the metaphor for his private agonies." Between 8 June and 6 July 1937, Picasso produced a dozen drawings and four oil paintings depicting the weeping woman. After returning from a summer holiday in Mougins, he completed the last The Weeping Woman painting on 26 October 1937. In total, 36 works depicting the weeping woman have been identified, executed between May and the end of October 1937.

Reader's Guide

The final version of Picasso's 1937 The Weeping Woman is an abstract portrait of a grief-stricken woman. It is an oil painting on canvas measuring 61 x 50 cm and is signed 'Picasso 37' near the centre on the right edge. It is one of a series of artworks based on the theme of a woman weeping, which Picasso created while producing Guernica. The composition of this painting is highly stylised. Picasso used bright colours and bold lines to convey the figure in a complex series of angular shapes and planes. Despite its abstract nature, the model for this portrait can be identified as Dora Maar, Picasso's lover. Roland Penrose commented on the use of colour in the painting in his biography of Picasso: "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 without warning." The face of the weeping woman can be traced directly to the tortured figures depicted in Guernica. In particular, the weeping woman continues the theme of mourning that can be seen in the image of the screaming woman holding a dead baby in Guernica. The Weeping Woman has been described as the most complex, most fragmented and most highly coloured of all the weeping women artworks. The architecture of the weeping woman's face is very distinctive and shares many design elements with the four female figures depicted in Guernica. The face is portrayed from mixed viewpoints, with the nose in profile, the mouth shown in three-quarters view and the eyes viewed from the front.

Did You Know?

• Picasso produced 36 works depicting the weeping woman between May and the end of October 1937.
• The most elaborate version of The Weeping Woman was created on 26 October 1937 and is in the Tate collection.
• Another version created on 18 October 1937 is housed at the National Gallery of Victoria and was involved in a high-profile political art theft.
• Picasso first drew Dora Maar's portrait on 11 September 1936.
• Dora Maar disliked the portraits Picasso created of her, stating, "All (Picasso's) portraits of me are lies. They're Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar."