Cabeza de mujer llorando con pañuelo (III). Postscripto de «Guernica» (Weeping Woman’s Head with Handkerchief [III]. Postscript of "Guernica")

One of the central motifs linked to Guernica are the figures known as the “weeping women”, inspired in their physical appearance by Dora Maar. These portraits would be the pictures Pablo Picasso redid most often once he had completed the great mural on June 4^th 1937. Picasso introduced at least three formal variations to the compositions with regard to Guernica itself, the first being the tears that run down the contorted female faces, which do not appear in the legendary work. The second element, similarly absent from Guernica, is the handkerchief wiping the tears and finally, alongside these two iconographic motifs, Picasso includes a third formal variation; vivid colour, which becomes the protagonist of these paintings, contrasting with the chromatic range of the great mural, executed, as everybody knows, in whites, greys and blacks. The “Weeping Woman” was to become a recurrent motif in Picasso’s output even up to the 1940s, creating a link with the stylistic cycle begun by the painter in 1937, when he undertook the renowned painting.

Paloma Esteban Leal