Picasso & the Weeping Women

Picasso made nearly 60 wrenching pictures of weeping women, mostly during 1937, the same year he painted Guernica , his protest against the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. On one level, these weeping women represented the victims of bombed Guernica--grieving mothers, terrified peasants, stunned survivors--on another, they stand for the anguish of Europe teetering toward world war. On yet another level, as this revelatory catalogue of a traveling exhibit demonstrates, the weeping women, with their contorted faces and macabre expressions, reflect Picasso's relationships with three women. According to Freeman, the exhibit's curator, these paintings, drawings and prints embody Picasso's vitriolic anger toward his estranged first wife Olga Koklova, his response to his compliant yet tormented mistress Marie-Therese Walter and the emotional intensity of surrealist photographer Dora Maar, who replaced Walter as his lover. This analytical study includes 100 color plates plus photographs of Picasso's three muses, who display striking physical similarities to the weeping women. (Apr.)