polity french third republicconcept:era modern
Weeping Woman
Oil on canvas (1937) by Pablo Picasso, depicting Dora Maar as a weeping woman in Cubist fragmentation. Created as a coda to Guernica, it distills the motif of maternal grief from that mural into a single figure. Held at Tate Modern, London.
Scholarly Significance
A postscript to Guernica; Picasso's concentrated study of grief in wartime, a key work in the Spanish Civil War context.
Notes
- ·Painted October 26, 1937, in the same year as Guernica.
- ·The model is Dora Maar (1907–1997), photographer and Picasso's companion 1936–1944.
- ·The fractured, angular treatment of the weeping face was Picasso's most concentrated exploration of the grief motif.
- ·Considered a 'postscript' to Guernica: distilling its emotional core into a single head.
- ·The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) provides the political context of creation.