This is one of nine canvases on the theme of the ‘weeping woman’ that Picasso painted in 1937. The motif is linked to the figure of a grieving mother in his painting Guernica, who clasps her dead child to her chest. These portraits of a grief-stricken woman are evidently emblems of the multiple tragedies of the Spanish Civil War; although, in many respects, the painting’s meaning is as difficult to define as its subject is to identify. Simply interpreted, it is a portrait of Dora Maar, who posed for many of Picasso’s paintings at this time and with whom he shared an emotionally and intellectually complex relationship. But Maar is also representing others, for example, the Mater Dolorosa, or weeping Madonna, of Christian visual tradition. She also represents the bereft women of Spain, whose husbands and children have been killed in the war. Weeping woman was painted on 18 October, the culmination of an intense week in which Picasso drew and painted nothing but this subject. The figure’s emotional torment is made manifest through several visual elements, including her fragmented features and the chrome green paint that creates her queasy pallor.
Pablo Picasso
Spanish 1881–1973, worked in France 1904–73
Weeping woman 1937
oil on canvas
55.2 × 46.2 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased by donors of The Art Foundation of Victoria, with the assistance of the Jack and Genia Liberman family,
Founder Benefactor, 1986 (IC1-1986)
© Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022
