Dora Maar

French artist and partner of Pablo Picasso (1907–1997)

Henriette Theodora Markovitch (22 November 1907 – 16 July 1997), known as Dora Maar, was a French photographer, painter, and poet. A romantic partner of Pablo Picasso, Maar was depicted in a number of Picasso's paintings, including his Portrait of Dora Maar and Dora Maar au Chat.

Henriette Theodora Markovitch was the only daughter of Josip Marković (aka Joseph Markovitch) (1874–1969), a Croatian architect who studied in Zagreb, Vienna, and then Paris where he settled in 1896, and of his spouse, Catholic raised Louise Julie Voisin (1877–1942), originally from Cognac. In 1910, the family left for Buenos Aires where the father obtained several commissions including for the embassy of Austria Hungary. His achievements earned him the honor of being decorated by Emperor Francis Joseph I, even though he was "the only architect who did not make a fortune in Buenos Aires". In 1926, the family returned to Paris. Dora Maar, a pseudonym she chose, took courses at the Central Union of Decorative Arts and the School of Photography. She also enrolled at the École des Beaux Arts and the Académie Julian which had the advantage of offering the same instruction to women as to men. Maar frequented André Lhote's workshop where she met Henri Cartier Bresson. While studying at the École des Beaux Arts, Maar met fellow female surrealist Jacqueline Lamba. About her, Maar said, "I was closely linked with Jacqueline. She asked me, "where are those famous surrealists?" and I told her about Cafe de la Place Blanche." Lamba then began to frequent the cafe where she would eventually meet André Breton, whom she would later marry. In 1935, Maar was introduced to Pablo Picasso and became his companion and muse. She took pictures in his studio at the Grands Augustins and tracked the latter stages of his epic work, Guernica. Her father assisted with her finances in this period of her life as she was establishing herself while trying to earn a living. The studio displayed fashion, advertising and nudes, and it became very successful. She met the photographer Brassaï with whom she shared the darkroom in the studio. Brassai once said that she had "bright eyes and an attentive gaze, a disturbing stare at times". Maar frequented the "October group", formed around Jacques Prévert and Max Morise after their break from surrealism. She had her first publication in the magazine Art et Métiers Graphiques in 1932. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Vanderberg in Paris. It is the gelatin silver works of the surrealist period that remain the most sought after by admirers: Portrait of Ubu (1936), 29 rue d'Astorg, black and white, collages, photomontages or superimpositions. The photograph represents the central character in a popular series of plays by Alfred Jarry called Ubu Roi. The work was first shown at the Exposition Surréaliste d'objets at the Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris and at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. She also participated in Participates in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, at the MoMA in New York the same year. Surrealist concepts and interests often aligned with the ideas of the political left of the time and so Maar became very politically active at this point in her life. and a radical collective of left wing actors and writers called October.

Maar first saw Pablo Picasso at the end of 1935 when she was taking promotional shots on the set of the Jean Renoir film The Crime of Monsieur Lange. She was captivated by him, but they did not formally meet. Maar was introduced to Picasso a few days later by their mutual friend Paul Eluard at Cafe des Deux Magots. The story of their first encounter was told by the writer Jean Paul Crespelle, "the young woman serious face, lit up by pale blue eyes which looked all the paler because of her thick eyebrows; a sensitive uneasy face, with light and shade passing alternately over it. She kept driving a small pointed pen knife between her fingers into the wood of the table. Sometimes she missed and a drop of blood appeared between the roses embroidered on her black gloves Picasso would ask Dora to give him the gloves and would lock them up in the showcase he kept for his mementos." painted by Picasso in his studio in the rue des Grands Augustins from May to June 1937; Picasso used these photographs in his creative process. She was Picasso's principal model, and he often represented her in tears. Maar boosted Picasso's understanding of politics and taught him skills in photography. Maar also introduced Picasso to the method of combining photography and printmaking, also known as the cliché verre technique. The most well known of these portraits is The Weeping Woman. Picasso was very inspired by the tragedies of the Spanish Civil War, and he thought of Maar as a living depiction of the pain and suffering that people experienced during this time. Maar did not appreciate Picasso's depiction of her in this way. When asked about his portraits of her, she said "all portraits of me are lies. They're Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar". Her liaison with Picasso, who physically abused her and made her fight Marie Therese Walter for his love, ended in 1943, although they met again episodically until 1946. Thus, on 19 March 1944, she played the role of Fat Anguish in the reading, at the home of Michel Leiris, of Picasso' first play, Desire Caught by the Tail, led by Albert Camus. In 1944, through the intermediary of Paul Éluard, Maar met Jacques Lacan, who took care of her nervous breakdown through years of analysis, in which her mental health began to improve. Picasso bought her a house in Ménerbes, Vaucluse, where she retired and lived alone. She turned to the Catholic religion, met the painter Nicolas de Staël (who lived in the same village), and turned to abstract painting.

The painted works of Maar remained unrecognized until their posthumous sale, organized in 1999, which made the public and professionals discover a very personal production that had never left her studio. Maar abandoned photography for painting alongside leaving Picasso and his influence, or rather the crushing presence of the painter, who had imposed on her a cubistic style. It was from the painful separation of Picasso that Maar truly became a painter. Tragic figurative works, such as the Portrait of Eluard, or Self Portrait to The Child of 1946, translate, in dark tones, the pain of post war years. After years of struggling with depression, Maar confined herself within her own memories. It is between the 1960s and 70s that there was the beginning of a respite when she experimented with abstract formats in shimmering colors. It was in the 1980s, though that the painter expressed herself fully in her many paintings of the Luberon region. Paintings of the landscapes around her house in Ménerbes, showed locations dominated by wind and clouds, strongly revealing the struggle of an artist with the ghosts of her past.

Maar spent her last years in her apartment in Rue de Savoie, in the Left Bank of Paris. She died on 16 July 1997, at 89 years old. She was buried in the Bois Tardieu cemetery in Clamart. Her experiments with photograms and dark room photography were only found posthumously.