Lot Essay
On July 1st, 1937, less than one month after his final work on Guernica, Picasso began work on the plate which would become La Femme qui Pleure, I.
It was a year of great significance for the Spanish artist, a year in which he produced his most politically aware work expressing his solidarity with the Republican faction in Spain. In January of that year he had been commissioned to create a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. This mural was to evolve, following the bombing of the Basque town on April 26th, into what we know today as Guernica.
In early January Picasso also produced a more personal statement in the pair of etchings entitled Sueño y mentira di Franco (Dreams and Lies of Franco; Bloch 297-8; Baer 615-6), which illustrated his prose poem on the horrors of the Civil War. It is here that Picasso first depicted the distraught weeping woman, screaming upwards at the sky, flames in the background.
This theme was to occupy Picasso through many of the following months. The weeping woman as a subject can be related to portrayals of the Virgin as Mater Dolorosa, a popular image in Counter-Reformation painting in Spain. In Guernica, the woman as portrayed to the left of the composition screams up at the sky, the limp body of her dead child cradled in her arms as in a Pietà. At the right, another woman rushes into the composition; her eyes streaming, perhaps recalling the letter in which his mother told Picasso that the smoke of burning buildings was causing her eyes to tear.
After the delivery of Guernica to the Pavilion in mid-June, Picasso turned once again to the subject of the weeping woman. On the 8th of June, he produced the first drawing which is a recognizable prototype for the etching, a type repeated during the month. On June 20th, he rendered the same subject on canvas. By now she is clutching a handkerchief to her eyes, her left hand resembling the scissor-like limb which appears in the print. On the 1st of July, Picasso turned his attention to a large copper plate where he began the first state of La Femme qui pleure, I.
The culmination of seven months' obsession, the print which followed represents the artist's strongest and most defined statement in the printed medium. Working steadily on the plate, Picasso produced, in all, seven independent states of the image.
In the first statÿe, of which two proofs exist, the artist sketched in drypoint what would become the basis for the finished piece, aquatint only being added in the second state. The production of the third state involved considerable additional work in etching and some small areas of aquatint were burnished away. The artist printed an edition of 15 in this state. Additional etching was added in the fourth state and further burnishing of the aquatint took place in the fifth state (only one proof in each of these states is recorded).
In the sixth state (erroneously identified as the seventh in Baer, Volume II, revised in her Volume V, pp. 560-1), the plate was considerably darkened with drypoint and two proofs were pulled. Finally, after this drypoint was partially scraped away, the final edition was printed in the seventh (formerly identified as the sixth) state from which this impression comes.
Of the fifteen numbered copies in this state, four are known to be in museum collections (1/15 Hannover Museum, 4/15 Prado Museum, 5/15 Tate Gallery, 9/15 Picasso Museum, Paris). At the time of the artist's death, copies 6/15 to 15/15 were in the artist's estate. All of these impressions have now entered private collections (with the exception of 9/15, in the Picasso Museum).
The image which confronts the viewer in this final version of Picasso's masterpiece is of a woman in pain, a handkerchief clutched to her face, her moÿuth frozen in a silent shriek. The vertical band of aquatint anchors her within an enclosed space but her positioning within the picture plane adds to our sense of discomfort. She seems to be fighting to stay within the confines of the plate, slowly losing her grip. Two sword-like tears spurt from her right eye, recalling the swords of the Virgin of Seven Sorrows.
There has been much speculation as to the identity of the woman depicted. Often felt to be a portrait of Dora Maar, she in fact also possesses characteristics of Marie-Thérèse Walter. However, in her extraordinary agony, this subject transcends any one identity. She is the Mater Dolorosa of the Spanish people weeping for their agony. As with Guernica, in painting, La Femme qui Pleure, I remains one of the most important graphic works of the 20th Century.
It was a year of great significance for the Spanish artist, a year in which he produced his most politically aware work expressing his solidarity with the Republican faction in Spain. In January of that year he had been commissioned to create a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. This mural was to evolve, following the bombing of the Basque town on April 26th, into what we know today as Guernica.
In early January Picasso also produced a more personal statement in the pair of etchings entitled Sueño y mentira di Franco (Dreams and Lies of Franco; Bloch 297-8; Baer 615-6), which illustrated his prose poem on the horrors of the Civil War. It is here that Picasso first depicted the distraught weeping woman, screaming upwards at the sky, flames in the background.
This theme was to occupy Picasso through many of the following months. The weeping woman as a subject can be related to portrayals of the Virgin as Mater Dolorosa, a popular image in Counter-Reformation painting in Spain. In Guernica, the woman as portrayed to the left of the composition screams up at the sky, the limp body of her dead child cradled in her arms as in a Pietà. At the right, another woman rushes into the composition; her eyes streaming, perhaps recalling the letter in which his mother told Picasso that the smoke of burning buildings was causing her eyes to tear.
After the delivery of Guernica to the Pavilion in mid-June, Picasso turned once again to the subject of the weeping woman. On the 8th of June, he produced the first drawing which is a recognizable prototype for the etching, a type repeated during the month. On June 20th, he rendered the same subject on canvas. By now she is clutching a handkerchief to her eyes, her left hand resembling the scissor-like limb which appears in the print. On the 1st of July, Picasso turned his attention to a large copper plate where he began the first state of La Femme qui pleure, I.
The culmination of seven months' obsession, the print which followed represents the artist's strongest and most defined statement in the printed medium. Working steadily on the plate, Picasso produced, in all, seven independent states of the image.
In the first statÿe, of which two proofs exist, the artist sketched in drypoint what would become the basis for the finished piece, aquatint only being added in the second state. The production of the third state involved considerable additional work in etching and some small areas of aquatint were burnished away. The artist printed an edition of 15 in this state. Additional etching was added in the fourth state and further burnishing of the aquatint took place in the fifth state (only one proof in each of these states is recorded).
In the sixth state (erroneously identified as the seventh in Baer, Volume II, revised in her Volume V, pp. 560-1), the plate was considerably darkened with drypoint and two proofs were pulled. Finally, after this drypoint was partially scraped away, the final edition was printed in the seventh (formerly identified as the sixth) state from which this impression comes.
Of the fifteen numbered copies in this state, four are known to be in museum collections (1/15 Hannover Museum, 4/15 Prado Museum, 5/15 Tate Gallery, 9/15 Picasso Museum, Paris). At the time of the artist's death, copies 6/15 to 15/15 were in the artist's estate. All of these impressions have now entered private collections (with the exception of 9/15, in the Picasso Museum).
The image which confronts the viewer in this final version of Picasso's masterpiece is of a woman in pain, a handkerchief clutched to her face, her moÿuth frozen in a silent shriek. The vertical band of aquatint anchors her within an enclosed space but her positioning within the picture plane adds to our sense of discomfort. She seems to be fighting to stay within the confines of the plate, slowly losing her grip. Two sword-like tears spurt from her right eye, recalling the swords of the Virgin of Seven Sorrows.
There has been much speculation as to the identity of the woman depicted. Often felt to be a portrait of Dora Maar, she in fact also possesses characteristics of Marie-Thérèse Walter. However, in her extraordinary agony, this subject transcends any one identity. She is the Mater Dolorosa of the Spanish people weeping for their agony. As with Guernica, in painting, La Femme qui Pleure, I remains one of the most important graphic works of the 20th Century.