Weeping Woman 1937

Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman is at Tate Britain in London, painted with oil on canvas. It’s all sharp angles, jagged edges, and colours that clash: yellows, greens, and blacks. It’s like the painting is tearing itself apart, which I guess makes sense. I can imagine Picasso, caught between the pressure to represent real suffering and the lure of abstraction, trying to find a way to show this woman's pain. And you can almost see his struggle in every brushstroke. Did he start with a more traditional portrait, only to break it apart bit by bit? The tears aren't just tears; they're like shards of glass, and the face is a mask of grief. She bites down on a handkerchief, her knuckles white, in an attempt to retain control. I can almost see Picasso in his studio, wrestling with the canvas like Jacob wrestling with the angel. He’s trying to distill centuries of art history and human emotion into one image. Other artists have explored similar themes, from the Old Masters to contemporary painters—a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation across time.