The Weeping Woman [Deborah Wye]

Pablo Picasso : [brochure] The weeping woman [Deborah Wye]

Author Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973

Date 2001

Publisher The Museum of Modern Art, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books

Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/171

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists.

An historic achievementin modernprint- making, Pablo Picasso's The Weeping Woman(1937) was recentlyadded to The Museumof ModernArt's permanentcol lection. Immediately striking for its mon umentalscale, unusual for an etching,this masterful imagedraws the viewer in with its concentrated intensity. A frightening tangle of line and shape,the massivehead is placed relatively low in the composi tion, heighteninga senseof despair.One is confrontedwith a symbolof wrenching pain that can be linked not only to events in the artist's personallife, but also to the broader intellectual, social, and political climate in which it was created. Picasso's imagination was fueled in countlessways, with the womenin his life providing an ongoing source of creative energy,and the nature of the art process itself adding further avenuesto explore. The expressive tools for The Weeping Womanwere found in the workshop of Roger Lacouriere,a master printer with whom the artist uncoveredthe full poten tial of the intaglio techniques.The drawn, scratched,and scribbled marks that form this intricate pattern embody qualities uniqueto etching and drypoint.Their dis tinctive assertiveness results from ink becomingslightly raisedon the surfaceof

PabloPicasso. The Weeping Woman. 1937. Etching, aquatint, and drypoint, plate: 27 1/8 x 19 1/2" (68.9 x 49.5 cm); sheet:30 5/16x 22 5/16"(77 x 56.7 cm). Publisher:the artist, Paris.Printer: Lacourifere,Paris. Edition: 15 (3rd of 7 states).Acquired through the generosityof the KatskoS uzukiMemorial Fund, the RivaCastleman Endowment Fund, David Rockefeller,The Philipand LynnStraus Foundation Fund, and Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro; Linda and Bill Goldstein, HerbertD. Schimmel,the EdwardJohn NobleFoundation, and the Associatesof the Departmentof Printsand IllustratedBooks; The CowlesCharitable Trust, NelsonBlitz, Jr. with CatherineWoodard and Perri andAllison Blitz, Mary Ellen Meehan,and Anna Marie and RobertF. Shapiro; and Ruthand LouisAledort, Caroland Bert Freidus,David Orentreich, and Susan and Peter Ralston.© 2001 Estateof PabloPicasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Y ork McUm Mob a w the paper during the printing process.At the top of the Woman,one mustalso notethe socialand political events headof the figure, tonal areasof grainy aquatint flow in of that time for other instigatingfactors. In 1937,Guer an amorphousdesign, adding to an overall senseof the nica,a small town in Spain,was brutally bombedduring irrational laid bare.While not an official memberof the the SpanishCivil War. Picassowas deeply affected by Surrealist group, Picassoabsorbed its preoccupations, thesetragic circumstancesin his native land,and when which focusedon the explorationand articulation of the commissionedto create a mural-size painting for the unconsciousfears and desiresso vividly capturedhere. SpanishPavilion of the Paris World's Fair,chose Guer In the mid-twenties,although married since 1918to nica as his subject. For over forty years this twentieth- Olga Khokhlova,Picasso began a relationship with the century masterpiece was on loan to The Museum of young and voluptuous Marie-Therese Walter who, in ModernArt. In accordancewith Picasso'swishes, it was 1935, bore him a child. Soon thereafter, Dora Maar returnedto Spainafter democracywas restored.In 1981, enteredhis life. A Surrealist photographerwith intellec when Guernicaleft New York, it was accompaniedby a tual interestsand a highly-volatiletemperament, she has groupof the artist's related drawingsand prints that had often been identified as the subject of The Weeping beeninstalled alongside it. Amongthem were two states Woman, a motif Picassoused in nearly sixty paintings, of the print The WeepingWoman, whose tragic subject drawings,and prints duringthis period.But scholarshave relates to figures depictedin the painting. It is only now also notedcharacteristics belonging to the other women that this striking image,a metaphorof both personaland with whom he remainedentangled. The depictionof the universaldespair, is onceagain here at the Museumfor foreheadand nosein this compositionresembles those future generationsto studyand contemplate. featuresin other works for which Marie-Thereseserved as model,and the open,threatening mouth with promi DeborahWye, Chief Curator nent teeth and visible tongue are thought to reference Departmentof Prints and Illustrated Books Olga.But the mosttelling indicationof a conflationof the competingforces in Picasso'spersonal life hasbeen noted in the figure's hands:the more prominenthand suggests Dora Maar,known for nails filed to sharppoints and pol For further reference: ishedbright red; the other signalsMarie-Therese, whose Freeman,Judi. Picassoand the Weeping Women: The Yearsof Marie-Therese Walter & Dora Maar. Los Angeles: LosAngeles nails were bitten short and jagged. CountyMuseum of Art; NewYork: Rizzoli, 1994. While Picasso'stumultuous relationships with women Rubin,William, editor. Picassoand Portraiture: Representationand provide some possible motivations for The Weeping Transformation.NewYork:The Museumof ModernArt, 1996.

This card is madepossible through the generosity of NelsonBlitz, Jr., with CatherineWoodard and Perri and Allison Blitz.

Producedin conjunctionwith the exhibition About Face: Selectionsfrom the Departmentof Prints and Illustrated Books March 22-June5, 2001 The Museum of Modern Art © 2001The Museumof ModernArt, NewYork Department of Prints and Illustrated Books