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Rare photographs by Dora Maar cast Picasso’s tormented muse in a new light
London gallery shows intimate images, including portraits of the artist, that reveal a great talent in her own right

Donna Ferguson
Sun 16 Jun 2024 06.00 CEST

Dora Maar is renowned as Pablo Picasso’s “weeping woman”, the anguished lover who inspired him to repeatedly portray her in tears. Now a London gallery is seeking to re-establish her as a pioneering surrealist artist in her own right, with an exhibition showcasing photographs recently discovered in her estate.

The exhibition, which opens at the Amar Gallery in London on 16 June, will include rare surrealist photograms and intimate photographs dating from her time with Picasso. These include two extraordinary portraits of him from the 1930s and one charting the creation of his anti-fascist masterpiece, Guernica, in his studio surrounded by paint pots. The works were bought at auction from Maar’s estate two years ago and have never been exhibited in a public gallery before.

Paris-born Maar was a respected experimental photographer whose work was about to appear in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London alongside Salvador Dalí and Man Ray when the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard introduced her to Picasso. In an encounter at the Cafe des Deux Magots in Paris, ­documented by art critic Jean-Paul Crespelle, 54-year-old Picasso noticed the 28-year-old Maar at a nearby table, repeatedly driving a penknife between her fingers into the wood. “Sometimes she missed and a drop of blood appeared between the roses embroidered on her black gloves,” Crespelle wrote.


https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... ented-muse

Whatever4 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2024 5:21 pm Very cool photographs