The Weeping Woman

Few faces in modern art are as instantly recognizable as this one. Painted by Pablo Picasso in 1937, "The Weeping Woman" shows a woman in pure anguish, her features shattered into sharp angles and clashing colors. The bright yellows, greens, and reds might seem cheerful at first glance, but they only sharpen the sense of pain. Her hands press against her face, her eyes spill tears, and her mouth twists in a way that feels almost unbearable. This is Cubism used not to puzzle the eye but to capture raw emotion.

The painting grew out of a darker work. That same year Picasso created "Guernica," his huge response to the bombing of a Spanish town during the Spanish Civil War. The weeping woman was a figure he returned to again and again as a symbol of grief and the suffering caused by war. The model was often Dora Maar, the photographer and artist who was Picasso's partner at the time and who documented the making of "Guernica." She once said that all his portraits of her were lies, and that none of them showed her as she truly was.

Look closely and you can feel why this image still stings. Picasso wanted you to see sorrow from every angle at once, as if a single point of view could never hold so much feeling. It is not a comfortable painting, and it was never meant to be.