Picasso Weeping Woman As an Image of Suffering
Pablo Picasso’s remarkable oil on canvas painting Weeping Woman (1937) is both a personally and politically significant painting. It is among the series of weeping women paintings that were painted by Picasso in 1937. Picasso addressed the theme of depicting a woman holding a handkerchief to her teary face in numerous other works of art in different mediums (Léal 396), such as drawings, etchings and paintings, all of which were produced with the intention of standing as voiceless but visual witnesses to an inexpressible modern tragedy. In 1937, after the Spanish Civil War had come to an end, members of the Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to paint a huge mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exhibition that was to take place in Paris in the coming summer (Martin).
At that time, Spain was under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, and Picasso was already expressing his opposition to his military regime through his art. On 26 April 1937, Picasso had already started working on the mural for the Spanish Pavilion when the Basque Country village of Guernica was bombed for three hours by German planes on the orders of General Franco complete decimating it (Martin). In the attempt to escape the bombing, the unprotected civilian population of the village got caught up in machinegun fire and was brutally slaughtered. Picasso decided to make this dreadful act the subject of the Guernica mural. The Weeping Woman painting in discussion, which was painted by Picasso in late 1937 as a part of a series, is termed as a ‘postscript’ of his Guernica mural. The common sheer motif of a grieving woman in the disturbing images of the mural is also the central image in Picasso’s Weeping Woman painting.
Background of Weeping Woman Picasso
Aspects of the tumultuous life that Picasso was leading have also been read into his Weeping Woman painting. In 1935, Picasso’s marriage to his first wife, Olga Koklova, officially came to an end. The married couple’s relations had been deteriorating since 1932 when Koklova had found out that Picasso had been having an affair Marie-Thérèse Walter for the past five years. However, by mid 1936, Picasso had become involved in another romantic relationship with Dora Maar, and Walter, like his first wife, felt that she had been replaced (Richardson). It is not surprising that Picasso brought a lot of pain to the various loves in his life, and this indicates why he seemed to have been obsessed with the motif of the grieving, or rather “weeping” woman. However, apart from this personal speculation, Picasso depicts the iconic weeping woman motif to strongly denounce the brutality and inhumanity of modern warfare. Picasso depicts this accusation and protest by using a harsh and sharp palette of acid greens and hot purples (Goldstein).
Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman (1837) is a serious work of art, full of emotion and pain. Picasso used his mistress, Dora Maar, as the subject of this painting, “whom Picasso described as "always weeping"” (Jones). The colors and shapes that Pablo has used composed the face of the subject in this painting using clearly show her grief and seriousness. In modern art, Picasso was regarded as a man ahead of his time and used his abstract expressions to convey this, representing his subjects using “unusual” colors and shapes. He shows this through this very emotional painting. By using vivid colors and sharply outline shapes in this painting, Picasso shows the viewer the terror of war. Picasso emphasizes the subject’s emotions by mostly using thick lines that have dark outlines ("The woman who inspired Picasso"). Through these thick lines, he strongly draws attention to her mood. It also shows Picasso’s confidence in his work, and therefore his confidence in this anguished and distraught image.
Highlights of Weeping Woman Pablo Picasso
Picasso has used contrastingly large sharp angled shapes, especially triangles, to considerably enhance her facial expressions, and uses smaller shapes with strong, wavy outlines, such as for the hair. In comparison to the size of this 60.8 cm x 50 cm painting ("Pablo Picasso. Weeping Woman [Femme en pleurs]"), the subject seems quite large, her face filling most of the painting. The large size of the subject’s face allows Picasso to use available space to depict her emotions. Maybe Picasso intended to depict her facing expression so up-close to make the viewer feel the subject’s emotions and feel as if they too were involved in the terror of war. Or perhaps, Picasso just wanted to focus on the atrocity of the war and his feelings about it by making her features rather large. However, regardless of what he intended, the intense look of anguish on the face of subject conveys both of these messages ("Weeping Woman 1937").
The tone that Picasso has used in this painting is another element that helps define it. In this painting, Picasso uses a tone that makes the subject’s features appear as if they he has specifically highlighted them to emphasize the meaning and significance behind them. However, Picasso does not use tone in the conventional sense because he has already used clashing dark and unnaturally bright colors ("The woman who inspired Picasso"). Picasso has painted his painting in different shades of the same color to create tone. For instance, he has used different shades of green to show shadows on the figure’s hands. However, overall Picasso has not really used much tone in this painting; in fact, he has barely used any tone at all. Throughout this entire painting, Picasso has not changed the tones much, apart from the shadows on the handkerchief and the hands.
Along with tone, color is an important part of communication in this painting. Picasso lights up the different parts of subject’s face and shows tone in various unusal shades by using weird colors. The colors are weird because they are not the colors that are traditionally used to paint a subject’s face in a painting. In most paintings, artists try to show the viewer what the subject actually looks like by using a relevant variety of colors, but in Picasso’s painting, the viewer cannot really tell what Dora Maar looked like in real life. Picasso has mostly used very bright and mono-toned colors, apart from the ones on handkerchief and the hands. Picasso has painted this painting to have a rather smooth texture. The viewer will not find any visible rough areas in this painting. The subject’s face is composed of nothing but sharp and smooth shapes.
The view can also see that the surface of the of the subject’s face is absolutely smooth from the smoothness of the lines. The lines are clear, sharp and smooth rather than being fuzzy or jagged ("The Weeping Woman"), which helps draw the viewer’s attention to the fact that the subject’s face is smooth. Moreover, Picasso has painted all of the colors so evenly that it seems that the texture of the colors throughout the surface of the painting is the same. The direction of the painting’s subject also tends to add to the smoothness of the painting. Even though it seems as if her features are sticking out in every direction, however, they also appear to “belong” and seem to be smooth. It is almost as if the direction of subject’s face is making the painting smoother. There seems to be considerable harmony in this painting. The blend of colors, lines, shapes and tones create harmony in this painting.
Harmony Paintings of a Pablo Picasso Weeping Woman
Even though the subject matter of Picasso’s painting may not seem “harmonized,” but it is apparent that there is harmony in the features of this painting. The colors that Picasso has used tend to complement one another quite well, even though they are contrasting. Most of the lines are all same, they are mostly black and think, which makes them harmonious, and the varying size of the brighter colors and sharp shapes balances out the subject’s face. The colors and lines are the most contrasting elements in this painting, but they still create balance. These two elements are contrasting because the lines are black and thick ("The woman who inspired Picasso"), outlining all of the shapes while the shapes within those lines are filled in the bright colors. Despite being opposites, this painting would not be complete without either. In fact, all of the elements mentioned early contribute to balancing this painting. The state of harmony in this painting depends on all of them.
The colors, direction of the figure’s face, lines, shapes, sizes, and tones all play an integral role in balancing this painting. Picasso has used varying but bright colors, and mostly dark and thick lines that contrast well towards the colors. He has also used shapes of various sizes to balance them. However, the painting also seems to have a rhythm. To say the least, while the shapes are all original they seem to have their own sort of character, as a result of which every part of the subject’s face seems to be telling a different part of the story. The colors have refreshing contrast so they complement each other while simultaneously contradicting each other in the different features of her face. However, Picasso has repetitively used the colors blue, green and yellow in order to create rhythm. Throughout the entire painting, he uses these colors and the main colors of the subject’s face. A sort of unity is created by this bright variety.
Conclusion
Picasso’s Weeping Woman painting and perhaps his entire weeping women series are recognized as one of the most important pieces of artwork not merely because it is painted by Pablo Picasso, or because he has painted it well and it is worth a fortune. This is because his painting is actually educational. Picasso’s painting teaches the viewer about the terrors of war that seem to be visible in the anguished features of the subject’s face. The painting teaches the viewers that the world is not always a wonderful place, and there are many people who are in pain and are terribly suffering in this very world. By genuinely depicting the emotion in the subject’s face, Picasso shows that he truly cared about those who suffered and those who were scarred by the atrocities of war. It also teaches the viewer that this world has had a dark, dreadful history in which dreadful inhumanities have been committed. Pablo Picasso succeeds in depicting raw emotion in the Weeping Woman (1937).
Works Cited
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Léal, Brigitte. "Portraits of Dora Maar." Trans. Array Picasso and Portraiture. . 1st ed. New York: Abrams Books, 1996. 396. Print.
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