Dora Maar

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Dora Maar (born November 22, 1907 in Tours , † July 16, 1997 in Paris ; born Henriette Theodora Markovitch ) was a French photographer , painter , model and muse of Pablo Picasso .

biography

childhood and education

Dora Maar was born in 1907 as Henriette Theodora Markovitch in Tours, in western France. Her father Josip Marković (Joseph Markovitch, 1874-1969) was a Croatian architect from Zagreb , her mother Louise Julie Voisin (1877-1942) was a French native from the Touraine region . Maar grew up in Paris and later in Buenos Aires , Argentina , where her father worked for the Austro-Hungarian embassy. She returned to France in 1926. Maar studied photography and painting in Paris at the school of the Union centrale des arts décoratifs , at the École de photographie and the Académie Julian and later became an apprentice to André Lhote . During this time she changed her name to Dora Maar. A fellow student who became a close friend was Jacqueline Lamba , later André Breton's second wife . In 1931 she took photos of Mont-Saint-Michel for a commissioned work and met the photographer Pierre Kéfer. Together with him, she founded the Kéfer - Dora Maar photo studio in 1934 , which also accepted orders for advertising photos and shared the darkroom with Brassaï .

Portrait d'Ubu
Dora Maar , 1936
Gelatin silver print
18.1 x 11.4 cm
National Gallery of Australia

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

In the same year, Maar was able to set up his own studio at 29 Rue d'Astorg in the 8th arrondissement with the financial support of her father . She met Henri Cartier-Bresson and through her liaison with the writer and philosopher Georges Bataille got to know André Breton , who dedicated an original edition of his second surrealist manifesto (1930) to her. In the 1930s Dora Maar was a permanent member of the Parisian surrealists around Breton, Man Ray and Brassaï, the latter introduced her to photographers and photojournalists. In contrast to her avant-garde and fashion photos, Dora Maar chose the lives of social outsiders, the unemployed and the homeless, which she took in Barcelona , London and Paris, as her artistic subject . Her photo series were rated as politically engaged street photography before she turned to surrealist photography and in 1936, inspired by Alfred Jarry's play King Ubu , created the mysterious "Portrait of Ubu" ( Portrait d'Ubu ). The manipulated photograph of an armadillo embryo became a symbol of surrealism and was exhibited in 1936 in the Paris gallery Charles Ratton and the International Surrealist Exhibition in London. During these years Maar belonged to the revolutionary group Contre-Attaque (1935-1936).

Meeting with Picasso

In 1936, 29-year-old Dora Maar, who spoke fluent French , Spanish , Croatian and English, was introduced to Pablo Picasso by Paul Éluard in the Café Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés . This was apparently fascinated by their dark beauty, their dashing, their theatricality and their violence. “She wore black gloves with little pink flowers sewn onto them. She took off her gloves and took a long, sharp knife, which she rammed into the table between her outstretched fingers to see how close she could get to each finger without actually cutting herself. From time to time she missed him by a fraction of an inch and before she had finished playing with the knife her hand was covered in blood. ”Picasso asked her to give him the gloves and he kept them in a display case , says Picasso's future partner Françoise Gilot in her book Life with Picasso (1964) about the first meeting between him and Dora Maar. The attractive young woman with long black hair and green eyes became the Spanish artist's best-known lover, muse and model. The staunch communist put Picasso in contact with politically active intellectuals such as André Breton and Louis Aragon, and in 1937 documented the work on his famous painting Guernica and other works with photographs . Maars Guernica series of pictures was published in 1937 in a special edition of the Cahiers d'Art . In the same year, the first solo exhibition of photographic works followed in the Parisian Galerie de Beaune.

Picasso captured Maar's aloofness and her aura, described as puzzling, in a series of portraits as a “weeping woman”, which are interpreted as a means of expression for his mourning for his homeland, which is at a civil war . The works were in contrast to the pictures of the blond Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909–1977), which he usually depicted in bright, bright colors. Dora Maar competed for Pablo Picasso's favor with his previous lover, who had given birth to their daughter Maya in 1935. "I was not interested in making a decision ... I told them they should work it out between themselves." Said the painter about the rivalry between the two women.

After separating from Picasso

Dora Maar's house in Ménerbes (2009)

Dora Maar's relationship, which turned from photography to painting out of love for Pablo Picasso, lasted eight years and broke up in 1943 when he met the 21-year-old Françoise Gilot . The separation from Picasso, who left her several still lifes, drawings and a house in Ménerbes , in Provence , was difficult for Maar to get over. From then on she lived in isolation in her apartment, avoided mutual friends and did not return to photography for the time being. While Maar's still lifes were exhibited in the Jeanne Bucher Gallery in Montparnasse in 1944 , she suffered from severe depression. In May 1945 she was treated for three weeks in a psychiatric clinic in Sainte-Anne, later, at the behest of Picasso and Paul Éluard, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan took care of Maar. In the same year, René Drouin had an exhibition of her paintings from the post-war period . In 1946 the works were exhibited in the Pierre Loebs Gallery. In the following years, Dora Maar settled in the house in Ménerbes, sought solace in religion and painted still lifes and landscapes. In June 1954, she and Picasso met when she and the American writer James Lord visited the English art critic and Cubism expert Douglas Cooper , who lived with the art historian and Picasso biographer John Richardson . At that time Picasso was in a relationship with Jacqueline Roque (1927–1986).

In 1957 Dora Maar's works were exhibited in the Berggruen Gallery in Paris. In the 1970s she devoted herself to abstract landscapes and, for financial reasons, sold several Picasso paintings in her possession. In later years she returned to photography, working with old negatives and experimenting with so-called " rayograms ", photographic images without a camera. Man Ray had taught her to work with light graphics, but she never returned to work with the camera. In 1994 Dora Maar fell in her home in Paris and was bedridden after a hospital stay. She died three years later at the age of 89 and was buried next to her parents and grandparents at the Cimetière du Bois Tardieu in Clamart , Hauts-de-Seine .

Aftermath

A year earlier, the American director James Ivory had Arianna Huffington's book Picasso. Genius and violence. One life. Filmed under the title Mein Mann Picasso with Anthony Hopkins as Picasso and Julianne Moore as Dora Maar. Maar left, among other things, ten pictures, 40 drawings, as well as jewelry and paper figures by Picasso, which two indirect descendants inherited from her. Both had only been determined by genealogists . Most of the pieces were sold at auction in late 1998.

Dora Maar au chat
Pablo Picasso , 1941
Oil on canvas
130 × 97 cm
Privately owned

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Many historians and critics did not perceive Dora Maar as an independent artist for a long time , including the German art collector and gallery owner Heinz Berggruen ("(She) was part of the planet Picasso in all the ups and downs of her life"). This has been the case since her death changed and numerous exhibitions and books are dedicated to the work of the artist. On May 3, 2006, the Sotheby’s auction of Pablo Picasso's portrait Dora Maar au Chat ( Dora with a cat , 1941) in New York achieved record sales of 95.2 million US dollars (approx. 75.4 million euros). This was the second highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. At the same time, Dora Maar au Chat was the fourth most expensive painting in the world.

The artist's largest retrospective to date was shown at the Center Pompidou in Paris in 2019 with 400 works and loans from all over the world .

literature

Non-fiction

  • Freeman, Judi: Picasso and the weeping women: the years of Marie-Thérèse Walter & Dora Maar . Los Angeles, Calif. : Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Rizzoli, 1994. - ISBN 0847818004 (English edition)
  • Lord, James: Picasso and Dora Maar: a personal memory . Munich: Matthes and Seitz, c 1994. - ISBN 3882217979
  • Mary Ann Caws : Dora Maar: the artist at Picasso's side . Foreword by Heinz Berggruen . Translation by Anja Gundelach. Nicolai, Berlin, 2000 ISBN 3-87584-020-8
  • Forester, Tania: Dora Maar - Picasso's weeping . Hamburg: Europ. Verl.-Anst., C 2001. - ISBN 3-434-50500-8
  • Combalía Dexeus, Victoria: Dora Maar: Bataille, Picasso et les surréalistes . Marseille: Musées de Marseille, 2002. - ISBN 2902308256 (French edition)
  • Dujovne Ortiz, Alicia: Dora Maar: prisonnière du regard . Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2003. - ISBN 2246607914 (French edition)
  • Baldassari, Anne: Picasso-Dora Maar . Paris: Flammarion; London: Thames & Hudson, 2006. - ISBN 2080305212 (English edition)

Dissertations

  • Hobsen, Mary Daniel: Blind insight: three routes to the unconscious in the photographs of Dora Maar . Dissertation: University of New Mexico, 1996. (English edition)
  • Flores, Jessica Robin Anastasia: Through the lens of the muse: the photography of Dora Maar, 1931-1936 . Dissertation: University of Cincinnati, 2003. (English edition)

Books with sections on Dora Maar

  • Gertraude Clemenz-Kirsch: The women of Picasso. edition ebersbach, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86915-062-8
  • Karoline Hille: Women's Games. Women artists in surrealism . Belser, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-7630-2534-3
  • Krauss, Rosalind E .: Bachelors . Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1999. - ISBN 0262112396 (English edition)
  • Weisberger, Edward: Surrealism, two private eyes: the Nesuhi Ertegün and Daniel Filipacchi Collections . New York, NY: Guggenheim Museum: Hardcover edition distributed by Harry N. Abrams, 1999. - ISBN 0892072199 (English edition)
  • Payne, Laura; Picasso, Pablo: Essential Picasso . Bath, UK: Parragon, 2001. - ISBN 0752542273 (English edition)
  • Mössinger, Ingrid; Adze, Kerstin; Ritter, Beate: Picasso et les femmes - Picasso and the women . Cologne: Dumont, 2005. - ISBN 978-3-832-17529-0

Novels and plays

  • Bukumirović, Dragana: Dora Mar . Beograd: Prosveta, 1998 (Serbian edition)
  • McAvera, Brian: Picasso's women. London: Oberon, 1999. - ISBN 1870259866
  • Avril, Nicole: Dora Maar - Picasso's mysterious muse . Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, 2004. - ISBN 3-7857-2150-1
  • Slavenka Drakulić : Dora and the Minotaur, translated from Croatian by Katharina Wolf-Grießhaber. Structure, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-351-03643-0

Exhibition catalogs

  • Saura, Antonio: Dora Maar d'après Dora Maar: [portraits raisonnés with chapeau: Antonio Saura]: 2 juin au 9 juil. 1983 . Paris: The Galerie, 1983. (French edition)
  • Jaguer, Edouard; Maar, Dora: Dora Maar: oeuvres anciennes: exposition du 10 au 27 juillet 1990 . Paris: Galerie 1900–2000, 1990. (French edition)
  • Maar, Dora: Dora Maar, fotógrafa: [exposición] Center Cultural Bancaixa, enero-marzo 1995 . [Valencia]: Bancaja, Obra Social, 1995. - ISBN 8487684610 (Spanish edition)
  • Maar, Dora; Galantaris, Christian; Mathias, JJ: Les livres de Dora Maar: Maison de la chimie, jeudi 29 Octobre 1998 at 2 pm . Paris: PIASA: Me. JJ Mathias, 1998. (French edition)
  • Maar, Dora: Les photographies de Dora Maar: une histoire - des oeuvres, avec Man Ray - Brassaï - Irving Penn - Emmanuel Sougez - Izis - Rogi André; Hôtel Drouot salles 1 et 7, vendredi November 20, 1998 at 9 p.m. Paris: Drouot Ricelieu, 1998. (French edition)
  • Picasso, Pablo; De Kooning, Willem; Schjeldahl, Peter: Picasso's Dora Maar: de Kooning's women. New York: C & M Arts, 1998. (English edition)
  • Picasso, Pablo; Maar, Dora: Les Picasso de Dora Maar: succession de Madame Markovitch . Paris: Maison de la Chimie, 1998. (French edition)
  • Maar, Dora: Les photographies de Dora Maar: une dernière rencontre en compangie de Brassaï - Izis - Man Ray - Rogi André; Hôtel Drouot salles 1 et 7, vendredi November 19, 1999 at 6 p.m. and at 9 p.m. Paris: Drouot Ricelieu, 1999. (French edition)
  • House of Art Munich: Dora Maar . Munich: Haus der Kunst, 2001. - ISBN 3-00-008554-8
  • Picasso Museum; National Gallery of Victoria : Picasso, Dora Maar: Il faisait tellement noir. [Catalog de l'exposition] Paris, Musée Picasso, February 14 – May 22, 2006, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, June 29 – October 8, 2006 . Paris: Flammarion; Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2006. (French edition)
  • Picasso, Pablo; Maar, Dora; Baldassari, Anna: Picasso-Dora Maar, regards croisés: exposition, Paris, Musée Picasso, 15 février – 22 may 2006 . Paris: Flammarion: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2006. - ISBN 2080115820 (French edition)

Movie

TV documentary

  • The Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso - postscript or psychogram. Film by Tania Förster. Length: 30 minutes, Arte 2003 (repeated broadcast on 3sat on April 7, 2013 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Picasso's death).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e cf. Latimer, Tirza: Dora Maar . In: Grove Art Online (accessed January 30, 2009).
  2. ↑ cf. Picasso's muse Dora Maar has died , Associated Press Worldstream - German, Paris, July 25, 1997, 7:42 am Eastern Standard Time.
  3. ↑ cf. Nagy, Katja von: I have 60 dancers and I go to bed late . In: Welt am Sonntag of March 1, 1998.
  4. ↑ cf. According to Picasso, only God . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 4, 2001, p. 18.
  5. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Dora Maar
  6. ↑ cf. Dittmar, Peter: Dora Maar, the “Beloved No. 5” and “weeping woman” . In: Die Welt of October 15, 2005, issue 241/2005, p. 34.
  7. ↑ cf. $ 140 million - The most expensive painting in the world . In: Hamburger Abendblatt of November 3, 2006, issue 257/2006, p. 32.
  8. ↑ Kathrin Hondl: Beyond Picasso: The artist Dora Maar in the Center Pompidou In: SWR2 , Kulturinfo, requested on June 12, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Maar, Dora
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Markovitch, Henriette Theodora (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French photographer, painter and muse Pablo Picassos
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Tours
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1997
Place of death Paris