Copyright (c) 2015 Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte
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Abstract
There are two ladies in Guernica whose eyes were painted with the shape of tears. This outstanding visual metonymy is only part of a series of drawings, engravings and paintings, made by Picasso to depict the extreme pain. In some instances from the 12th and 13th October 1937, after the opening of the Spanish Pavilion in the International Exhibition of Paris, the tears fall heavily (almost solid) from the feminine faces in various steps. Picasso took the idea from the Fountain of mercury made by A. Calder and placed in the same pavilion just in front of Guernica. All these works of Picasso are placed in the artistic tradition of the "representation of passions". There is also here a study of the tears in western art after the Second World War.