Every second Sunday in May, our thoughts turn to mothers. That female figure who holds a unique place in our hearts. From antiquity to the present day, the mother remains the ultimate symbol of love, altruism, and self-sacrifice. With her selfless devotion, this human figure has passed through theatre, cinema and painting, leaving behind solid imprints that have inevitably inspired anyone who attempts to engage with Art–and which will continue to inspire for all eternity.
Modern Theatre: Absolute Love or Suffocating Presence?
If in ancient theatre the mother was a bearer of fate and tragedy, in modern theatre she is transformed into a reflection of society, of loneliness, female oppression and family bonds that sometimes protect and sometimes wound. The 20th and 21st centuries have given birth to great female roles—mothers carrying within them the contradictions of their era. The modern theatrical mother moves us not just because she loves; she moves us because she struggles, makes mistakes, betrays and ultimately reveals her deeply human nature.
Alving: the mother as a silent rebel (Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen, 1881)
One of the first “modern” mothers in playwriting is Mrs. Alving, a woman trapped between duty and truth as she tries to protect her son from his father’s mistakes and from the society’s rotten morality. The play was a scandal in its time, but remains profoundly modern in its themes of family hypocrisy.
Amanda Wingfield: the mother as a prisoner of her own expectations (The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams, 1944)
Anthony Ross, Laurette Taylor, Eddie Dowling and Julie Haydon in the Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie (1945). By unknown (Billy Rose Theatre Collection) – NYPL Digital Collections, Public Domain.
Amanda embodies the mother who tries to protect her children through authoritarianism and taking refuge in the past. A woman trapped in dreams and memories, for her children she is sometimes a savior and sometimes a symbol of oppression.
Mother Courage: the mother as a survivor, both harsh and vulnerable (Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht, 1939)
2. Oscar award – winning actress Katina Paxinou in Bertolt Brecht’s play “Mother Courage and Her Children” at the Municipal Theater of Piraeus, 1972.
In Brecht’s political theatre, the mother becomes a survivor of Hitler’s brutality. Mother Courage tries to keep her children alive through the war, using every means available to her. But she pays a heavy price, as her every effort brings a new loss with it.
Cinema: from the microcosm of the home to the big screen
The same thing happened in cinema. From the tenderness of Almodóvar’s All About My Mother to the dark Mother by Bong Joon-ho, mothers have been models of self-sacrifice as well as contradictory and complex figures. For filmmakers, the mother was never just a another figure; she was an entire story in her own right could bring the everyday life of everywoman to the fore for the first time, in an entirely introspective way, on the “big screen”.
Terms of Endearment, James L. Brooks, 1983
One of the most moving of all mother-daughter stories. Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger deliver landmark performances in a movie that tackles love, conflict and the passing of time.
All About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar, 1999
The gripping story of a woman who, after the death of her son, embarks on a journey to find the boy’s father. A hymn to female strength and selfless maternal love.
Mother, Bong Joon-ho, 2009
A Korean mother struggles to prove the innocence of her son, who has been accused of murder. An evocative psychological drama which explores unconditional maternal love at the limits of obsession.
Painting: The Mother as Memory and a Trace of Eternal Love
In the visual arts, the mother has been portrayed as the purest and most personal symbol. Painters across the centuries have created works that sometimes combine the mother with her holy form and at other times with her spiritual and everyday role. Painters have chosen to depict their mothers not as beautified, stylized or refined, but as they themselves saw them—through the eyes of their soul.
James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, 1871
Better known as “Whistler’s Mother”. One of the most famous mother portraits in art history, it depicts the artist’s mother in profile, seated on a chair, with simplicity and emotion.
Depicted person: Anna McNeill Whistler place of creation: London. By James McNeill Whistler – Musée d’Orsay, Public Domain
Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother at the Age of 63, 1514
Portrait of the Artist’s Mother at the Age of 63/ Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
An intensely realistic and deeply human pencil drawing of his elderly mother. The passage of time is evident, along with the tenderness of the son observing her.
Egon Schiele, Mother Sleeping, 1911
Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
A moving work by the Austrian expressionist which depicts his mother asleep. Schiele often painted members of his family.
From theater stages to cinema screens and paintings that capture moments of eternity, the mother has been a discreet yet eternal presence. This Sunday, let us listen closely to those silent, yet immensely powerful images of her in art, and remember that the greatest creation is ultimately the love she leaves behind—our legacy for the ages.
