On April 26, 1937 the German Luftwaffe bombed the Basque city of Guernica in northern Spain at the request of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Reichmarschall Hermann Goering wanted to test his air force and Franco wanted to make an example of the Basques to the rest of Republic Spain. Picasso was asked by the Republic to paint a picture to be displayed in the Spanish pavilion of the 1937 World’s Fair to be held in Paris. For months Picasso could not choose a theme he thought appropriate for the occasion. After the destruction of Guernica Picasso had his subject, the horrors of modern warfare. He began his famous painting depicting the bombing of Guernica. During this time his lover was the photographer Dora Marr who photographed Picasso at work on this painting.
After Guernica was completed in June of 1937 Picasso continued to paint anguished female faces based on a figure in Guernica. Dora Marr was his model. These faces are famous for their contorted look and the dislocation of facial features. (GOOGLE Picasso’s Weeping Women) This poem was inspired by those faces.
The poetic inspiration for this poem is the style of Picasso’s writer and art collector friend Gertrude Stein. Stein’s work wrenched poetry out of conventional syntax and sense into a startling disjointed and apparently irrational verse. Her genius is that she infuses into these smashed language structures, rhythms and rhymes. For those who make the effort to understand, the very look/sound of the poems participate in and deliver the reality they ‘about’.
This poem, Picasso’s Weeping Women with its jolting language gives a sense of Picasso’s process as he painted these disordered faces. The poem does for the paintings what the paintings did for the observer, offer a fresh way of seeing the world.
2015
*see [poetry] to read the poem: Picasso’s Weeping Women.