Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, is associated most of all with pioneering cubism. In his art, he created a new way of looking at the world through abstracted, intersecting and fragmented forms. However, Picasso is just as famous for his tangled, romantic relationships; the women in his life provided inspiration for some of his most admired portraits, most notably The Weeping Woman (1937). Who was the muse for this cubist masterpiece, and why is she crying? To find out, we need to go back in time, one year earlier, to a café in Paris.
In 1936, Paris was a bohemian centre of art, film and literature. The French capital attracted avant-garde artists, writers and intellectuals from around the world, offering them the opportunity to exhibit in salons and expositions, attend influential art schools, and make a name for themselves. This freedom helped the city to birth many major modern art movements: impressionism, Fauvism, Dada, surrealism and, of course, cubism. During the 1920s and ’30s, the creatives of Paris would rendezvous at an art deco-styled café, located in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, called Les Deux Magots. This meeting place for writers, philosophers and artists welcomed the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, alongside Fernand Léger, Joan Miró and Picasso. Another artist who often came to this legendary café was the talented photographer Dora Maar.
The story of Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso’s first encounter has been much mythologised: it is said that Maar, aged twenty-nine at the time, was seated alone at Les Deux Magots, playing a game in which she stabbed a penknife between her fingers into the wood of the table. Years later, the episode was described in detail by another of Picasso’s models and lovers, Françoise Gilot, in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro:
Dora Maar wore black gloves with little roses. She took off her gloves and took a long, pointed knife that she stabbed into the table between her spread fingers. From time to time, she missed the mark by a fraction of a millimetre, and her hand was covered in blood. Picasso was fascinated. He asked Dora to give him her gloves, and he saved them under glass.
Maar wanted to win the attention of Picasso, almost thirty years her senior, and this sadistic, sensational knife game worked. Whether the legend of their meeting is entirely true or not, it nevertheless epitomises their emotionally charged, creative and tumultuous nine-year affair, ignited by Maar.
Born in 1907, Dora Maar was raised between Argentina and France by a family who supported her ambitions to become an artist. Settling in Paris aged nineteen, she studied at various art schools, including the progressive École des Beaux-Arts, Académie Julian and École de Photographie, where she developed an imaginative and atmospheric style of black-and-white photography.
Maar soon established herself as a prominent photographer associated with surrealism, a movement through which artists explored dreams, the subconscious and erotic desire. In 1936 she exhibited at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London alongside Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Eileen Agar and Paul Éluard, where her black-and-white photograph of a mystical, armadillo-like creature, Père Ubu, became a celebrated surrealist icon. Maar also worked as a successful photojournalist and commercial photographer. By 1931, aged just twenty-four, she had opened her own studio with the set designer Pierre Kéfer under the name ‘Kéfer – Dora Maar’, taking on significant commissions for individual portraits, fashion magazines and advertising campaigns.
Maar’s talent as a photographer played a hugely significant part in her relationship with Picasso. Early in their affair, they worked alongside one another in her darkroom, where she taught him complex photographic processes, such as cliché-verre, meaning ‘glass picture’, which involves drawing handmade negatives on glass. Under her direction, Picasso used this technique to create a series of startling, unposed portraits of her.
Picasso, too, inspired Maar. Under the influence of the painter, she created pioneering photomontages by effectively ‘painting’ with varying levels of light exposure. They had entered into a creative and productive partnership. Tate Modern’s director, Frances Morris, who interviewed Maar when the photographer was in her eighties, has spoken of the trust between the couple: ‘As much as being a sexual or emotional relationship, it was a collaborative one.’
It was during this early and artistically successful stage of their relationship, just one year after they had first met, that Picasso painted the infamous portrait: The Weeping Woman is unmistakably Dora Maar, with her distinctive, shoulder-length black hair, large, wide eyes, dark eyelashes and painted fingernails. But why is she crying?
This cubist canvas has frequently been read as a depiction of the couple’s dramatic and impassioned affair, following which Maar suffered a nervous breakdown. ‘Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman,’ Picasso notoriously said. He drew and painted her, afflicted by tears, over sixty times.
Without doubt, the couple had a stormy relationship. Outspoken and, at times, antagonistic, Maar was not afraid to stand up to Picasso, resulting in explosive arguments between them. Picasso’s womanising ways also added to this tension. When Maar met Picasso he was already involved with another woman and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, with whom he had a two-year-old daughter, Maya. Marie-Thérèse Walter once confronted Dora Maar in Picasso’s studio, insisting that the artist’s new muse leave: ‘I have a child by this man. It’s my place to be here with him. You can leave right now.’
The strong-willed Maar, however, didn’t back down: ‘I have as much reason as you have to be here. I haven’t borne him a child but I don’t see what difference that makes.’ Picasso continued to paint while they argued, before Marie-Thérèse Walter turned to him, demanding, ‘Make up your mind. Which one of us goes?’ He later recalled, ‘It was a hard decision to make. I liked them both, for different reasons: Marie-Thérèse because she was sweet and gentle and did whatever I wanted her to, and Dora because she was intelligent… I told them they’d have to fight it out themselves. So they began to wrestle.’
Picasso seemed to take great pleasure in creating competition between the women in his life, referring to this incident as one of his ‘choicest memories’. In many ways, he caused Maar to become a weeping woman. But could it be too simplistic to read Picasso’s portrait as a representation of Maar’s emotional distress within their relationship? Is there more to this painting than the depiction of an anguished muse at the artist’s mercy?
If we are to understand why Picasso painted Maar as a weeping woman, we need to step back from her personal relationship with the artist and look, instead, at her political beliefs. Like many surrealist artists, philosophers and poets during the 1930s, Maar had converted to left-wing politics. In fact, she became one of the Left’s most involved activists – a radical move for a woman at a time when women were still largely excluded from politics in France; they only gained the right to vote in 1944.
As the Great Depression of the 1930s hit hard, economic adversity proved beneficial for far-right parties and the fascist threat escalated across Europe. French politics became increasingly polarised, with citizens divided into two fronts: an extreme right-wing league or a left-wing who were united against fascism. Maar was amongst those who signed the Left’s ‘Appel à la lutte’ (‘Call to the struggle’) manifesto; advocating for a social revolution, their motto was:
There’s not a moment to lose
Unity of action
Call for a general strike!
Then, in 1935, Maar became involved in the Contre-Attaque group, led by the writer and philosopher George Bataille, who called for force and violence, rather than theoretical debate, in the fight against fascism; a passionate member, she not only signed their manifesto but operated their telephone line. She also supported the left-leaning theatre collective Groupe Octobre by recording their aggressively political performances in public spaces.
Maar’s deep commitment to left-wing ideology can be found in her social-documentary photography from the 1930s. Travelling to the outskirts of Paris, Barcelona and London, she portrayed labourers, the unemployed and children on desolate city streets and in the poorest neighbourhoods. Her photographs evoke, above all, the humanity of those affected by the devastating Depression, inviting viewers to feel compassion with her subjects.
When the politically engaged Maar met Picasso, her left-wing views made a significant impact on him, as an individual, and as a painter. Increasingly sharing her sympathies, and following in the creative footsteps of Maar, Picasso became absorbed with the theme of human suffering in his work; and so it is through this lens that we must look at The Weeping Woman. We must also take into account his celebrated painting, completed just weeks before, Guernica.
Guernica is considered one of the most powerful and moving anti-war paintings in the world. Through this monumental mural, measuring over seven metres wide, Spanish-born Picasso depicted his outrage at the bombing of Guernica on 26 April 1937, by German and Italian warplanes, during the Spanish Civil War.
The brutal aerial bombing by fascist forces was carried out on market day. Many defenceless people, including children, had gathered in the streets of the small town in Spain’s Basque Country. Rather than focusing on fighter planes and armed soldiers, Picasso pictured the pain of these innocent victims, showing the true cost of war in human terms.
It was Dora Maar who found a studio large enough for Picasso to paint Guernica in. Through her left-wing network, she gained access to a space located on the Rue des Grands-Augustins, not far from Notre-Dame. The building was the former headquarters of the ‘Contre-Attaque’ group, of which Maar was a loyal member. Having heard anti-fascist speeches made here, she identified it as the perfect place for Picasso to embark on an epic protest painting.
Maar joined Picasso in the studio, allowing her to witness every stage of Guernica being painted over thirty-six days. Whilst Picasso worked, she photographed him. Taking hundreds of photos, Maar traced the evolution of the tableau, from drawn outlines on the canvas to completed political masterpiece. Published in the art journal Cahiers d’Art, her documentary images memorialise the development of Guernica, during which Picasso had now become her subject.
Maar’s images also highlight the immense influence that her black-and-white photography had on the artist. In stark contrast to his earlier colourful approach, Picasso used a monochromatic palette of black, white and grey to paint this mural. His severe, photographic style created a nightmarish vision of fleeing and fallen human figures, animals distorted in agony, and hollow skulls, symbolic of death.
At the top centre of the canvas, you can see a stark light bulb, blazing in the shape of an evil eye. This light illuminates the victims of war, exposing their suffering. It also lights up the vision of Guernica within a compressed, darkened and ambiguous room. With the dangling lamp, it evokes Dora Maar’s shadowy darkroom, where Picasso had learnt photography from her.
Maar not only photographed Guernica, she also painted some of the hairs on the horse’s back, at Picasso’s request, and modelled for one of the women. At the extreme left of the painting is a mother, head thrust back, shrieking in grief, and holding the lifeless body of her dead child. This is one of the most devastating and unforgettable images within the painting. It is also the first time that we see Picasso painting a crying woman.
Just one week after completing Guernica, and in the very same studio, Picasso began The Weeping Woman. Maar recalls that he worked frantically, completing the canvas, for which she sat, in a matter of days, dating the finished work on 26 October 1937. With this work, Picasso was continuing, and deepening, his exploration on the theme of human suffering: the screaming woman, fleeing Guernica, had become a weeping woman, engulfed in grief.
Picasso’s Weeping Woman cries and cries, with no end in sight. Agony is etched into her face, defined by jagged lines; the handkerchief stuffed into her mouth appears like a shard of glass; and her black dress is the universal symbol of mourning. If you want confirmation that this painting, like Guernica, is an anti-war statement, take a close look at the woman’s eyes: you can see the silhouette of a warplane in place of each pupil.
The Weeping Woman is an evocation of overwhelming anguish caused by the atrocities of war. It encapsulates Maar’s compassion for human suffering, which she had photographed continually, and sympathetically, in her own work. In this portrait, it’s almost as if she is crying in grief at others’ pain.
Speaking out about his portrayal of Maar, Picasso revealed, ‘For years I gave her a tortured appearance, not out of Sadism, and without any pleasure on my part, but in obedience to a vision that had imposed itself on me.’ That vision encompassed the photographer’s political sympathies and anti-fascist stance, which he had grown to share.
At the same time, the painting is inflected with Picasso’s perception of Maar’s personal grief, resulting, in part, from her relationship with him. Picasso was often abusive towards Maar, physically and emotionally, exacerbating the depression and anxiety which she battled throughout her life. ‘Women,’ the artist once proclaimed, ‘are machines for suffering,’ fetishising the pain he caused them.
Compulsively unfaithful, Picasso never ended his relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter while he was with Maar. Furthermore, in 1943, he also took another, younger woman, Françoise Gilot, as his muse and lover. Finding out about Picasso’s new love interest, Maar was furious, and confronted him: ‘As an artist you may be extraordinary, but morally speaking you’re worthless.’ Maar’s words could be applied to numerous other ‘great’ figures from history, whose abusive behaviour has been excused, overlooked or hidden by their cloak of ‘genius’.
Nine years after Maar instigated the affair with Picasso, she left. Following the painful separation, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was treated by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Whether through guilt, or still desiring some level of control over Maar, Picasso bought her a house in Provence, from where she painted for the rest of her life.
It’s no surprise, then, that The Weeping Woman is read as a reflection of their problematic relationship, and Picasso’s view of Maar as tormented and anxious, a state which he increasingly induced. However, Maar herself refuted this intimate reading: ‘All [Picasso’s] portraits of me are lies. Not one is Dora Maar.’ She meant more to Picasso than tears, and she knew it.
Resolute in her beliefs, articulate and persuasive, Maar was instrumental in encouraging Picasso’s political awareness, which culminated in his greatest painting, Guernica. She played an integral role in the creation of this epic mural – emotionally, creatively and even practically. Picasso’s depiction of the tragic suffering caused by war became yet more palpable in his next protest piece, The Weeping Woman. Far from a forlorn, love-stricken muse at his mercy, Maar changed the trajectory of Picasso’s practice.
Muses were of paramount importance to Picasso, and Dora Maar was his most poignant partner. So much more than his plaything, Maar was an active, defining and dominant force, who deserves credit for the cataclysmic role she embraced in his career. At the same time, even a formidable woman like Maar was, in many ways, exploited by Picasso; manipulating his status as a ‘great artist’ he profited from Maar’s crucial input, using her creative talent to further his own career while contributing to her demise. Behind The Weeping Woman is Maar’s compassion, companionship, intelligence and political activism, all of which profoundly inspired Picasso.