Fabian Britten

THE WEEPING WOMAN, PICASSO. 1937

The weeping woman (60x49) was created in 1937 by famous French artist Pablo Picasso. He created the piece using oil paint on canvas. This is in fact the last piece of a series of 60 paintings all of which followed the same theme. This being the most elaborate piece and in fact one of the most famous and important paintings in History.

Pablo Picasso created this piece after writing to his mother and her telling him of the smoke in her eyes from the burning city in which the Nazi’s had destroyed Guernica. After speaking to his mother Picasso then took this literally and created the weeping woman, to reflect the smoke in her eyes. By doing this Picasso has then turned this massive tragically into more than just a by-product of war, and instead portrayed the suffering of a single individual therefore making the piece much more powerful.

In the eyes of the weeping woman you can see the Luftwaffe very subtly included, this was in response to the newspapers photographs which showed the Luftwaffe bombing Guernica.

Pablo Picasso has made it obvious that he has very personal connotations to Spain and the Spanish civil war and therefore I believe it makes it easier to empathize with the piece.

I personally am very fond with Picasso weeping woman and the series he completed, as I like the way he mimics a child style of drawing. His abstract approach is so different to most and nearly contemporary artists you see these days nits interesting to see and attempt a new style of art. I also believe the story and meaning behind this piece makes it so much more powerful and adds a real emphasis to the overall piece.

I have tried to replicate Pablo’s weeping woman in class, and split the image into quarters using a different medium to complete each quarter. I am relatively happy with the outcome of my final piece, as I believe I have managed to keep the scale quite accurate, as the piece doesn’t look out of proportion. However I did use the light box to trace out the first quarter before going over it in the chosen medium. This was helpful as it gave me a rough outline to work from and helped me judge the other three quarters by eye. The quarter, which I am least happy with, is the oil pastel, in the top left hand corner. This is because I feel like the lines aren’t quite as crisp as the other segments. I didn’t enjoy using this medium and I am going to try and avoid using it in later pieces. I am especially happy with both black and white quarters. I preferred working with black and white as I found it tricky to create the correct colours using the watercolours and believe it doesn’t stand out as much as the black and white quarters.

In conclusion if I had a chance to recreate this piece I believe I would find different medium to use instead of watercolour and oil pastel, as I did not work effectively with them. I found they were time consuming and didn’t give off the professional finish I was looking for. I would like to attempt a quarter using soft pastels as I work well with them and I believe they would contrast well with the chalk and charcoal section.