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Weeping Woman

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Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso’s, Weeping Woman (1937), is a most expressive and eccentric image of a woman in distress. The geometry and shapes in the painting are imaginative and outrageous, with bright colors and shapes of boats and flowers that are, to some extent humorous, except for the profound suffering of the women. The eyes of the women are shaped as boats within a rough sea, spilling tears in the form of diamonds. Diamond shaped tears are also the nails of her hands, held up to her face in fright. With a single image Picasso expresses a complex array of human anguish; terror, despair, outrage, hysteria, and death. The sad and dark eyed woman is Picasso's lover Dora Maar, but the woman is also a symbol of a victim of war or a witness to the war in Spain spreading throughout Europe in 1937.

Weeping Woman stands as a strong, iconic denouncement of the atrocities and inhumanity of modern warfare. The sharp angles reflect intense pain and the strident palette of acid greens and hot purples allows no rest or forgiveness for the eye- only protest and accusation. Modernism in art refers to a wide range of experimental and avant-garde techniques that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th century. These artistic movements were a reaction to the socio-political environments and challenged many traditional philosophies of art. Unlike European art of the early to mid 19th century, there is nothing natural or realistic about this portrait. Picasso uses his colours in a pretty uneven manner, using three- four colours on the face of the ‘Weeping Women’ instead of the usual ‘black’ and ‘white’ colours of the usual person.

Picasso's Weeping Woman shows the essence of a subject rather than its realistic portrayal. The art was influenced by changes in science and society, which showed less on tradition and a different view of the uncertainties of surface structure, and these were the underlying concepts on the idea of Modernism. Picasso used sharp, jagged lines to exaggerate the

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