Pablo Picasso

Pablo PicassoThe Weeping Woman
Oil on canvas60 х 49 cm
1937

Pablo Picasso (October 25 1881 - April 8 1973) was a Spanish artist who pioneered the style of Cubism. He lived in France for most of his life.

The Weeping Woman was part of a series of political paintings regarding a war in Spain, but his lover and muse Dora Maar was the model, and in a way, the painting is about her as well. Picasso said of Maar, "For me she's the weeping woman. For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one... Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman....And it's important, because women are suffering machines.”

Picasso had a long list of muses throughout his life who he would obsess over for a while and then leave for another. Dora Maar is thought to have been his most influential muse. She was also an artist herself.