Madre con niño muerto (I). Postscripto de «Guernica» (Mother with Dead Child [I]. Postscript of "Guernica")

According to Judi Freeman in her book “Picasso and the Weeping Women”, it is certain that Pablo Picasso saw Eisenstein’s classic film Battleship Potemkin, which opened in Paris in November 1926. In the study, Freeman places the frame in which a mother holds her dead child, from the famous sequence on the Odessa steps, alongside some of the sketches and ‘postscripts’ from Guernica. Whatever the case, regardless of whether the coincidence is major or minor, the visual power of Picasso’s images of motherhood connected to Guernica is equal to the Russian director’s shocking sequences. In this ‘postscript’, Madre con niño muerto (I). Postscripto de «Guernica» (Mother with Dead Child [I]. Postscript for “Guernica”), the use of vivid colours, so far from greys, rather than diminishing the tragedy of the composition actually serves to highlight the drama of the scene.

Paloma Esteban Leal