Pablo Picasso’s the Weeping Woman 1937

Pablo Picasso’s The Weeping Woman 1937 depicts a woman who appears to be filled with anguish or sorrow. The painting itself is quite minimalistic as there are only three main focal points within a small, monochrome room. The woman and her handkerchief that she holds are the main focal point of the painting, the next is the dark figure, or dark shadow which looms behind her towards the right of the painting. Although the artwork is clearly a cubist painting, Picasso has created a higher sense of realism than usually seen in his other artworks.

Picasso was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th Century who had a large influence on art and is known for co-founding the cubist movement along with Georges Braque who was very close to Picasso but was also very competitive with him. Their competitiveness is what built up the language of cubism and what gave it it’s abstract and systematic forms as they were constantly trying to be better than the other in a way only they could understand, the two of them would see what the other did and try to create something better within their knowledge of painting.

Pablo Picasso has been used to represent internal distress and political issues for many centuries, especially with his piece The Weeping woman as it was stolen from the National Gallery of Victoria on the 2nd of August in 1986 by a group of people who called themselves ‘The Australian Cultural Terrorists’. The reason for the paintings theft was that the group wanted to raise more fundings for the arts, directing their demands at the Victorian Minister of Arts, Race Mathews. If the demands went unresolved and unacknowledged they threatened to destroy the 1.6 Million dollar painting.

Throughout the works by Picasso, his paintings have been executed in the style of cubism, however The Weeping Woman has a more realistic touch to it. With many of Picasso’s works the eye can get somewhat confused.