Dora Maar
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Henriette Theodora Markovitch alias Dora Maar (November 22, 1907 – July 16, 1997) was a French photographer, poet and painter of Croatian descent, best known for being a lover and muse of Pablo Picasso.
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[edit] Early Life
She was born in Tours, Western France to a Jewish family, on November 22, 1907. Her father was Croatian, her mother was born in Tourraine, France. Dora grew up in Argentina.
She was famous as a photographer, and also was a painter herself, before she met Picasso. She made herself better known in the world with her photographs of the successive stages of the completion of Guernica that Picasso painted in his workshop on the rue des Grands Augustins, and other photos of Picasso. Together she and Picasso studied printing with Man Ray.
Picasso met her in January 1936 (when she was 29 years old), at the terrace of the Café Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris. The famous poet Paul Eluard, who accompanied him, had to introduce him to this beautiful, sad woman. He was attracted by her beauty and self-mutilation (cutting her fingers and the table playing The knife game - he got her bloody gloves and exhibited them on a shelf in his apartment). She spoke Spanish fluently, so Picasso was even more fascinated. Their relationship lasted nearly nine years.
Dora Maar became the rival of blonde Marie-Thérèse Walter who had given a daughter named Maya to Picasso. Picasso often painted beautiful sad Dora (she suffered because she was sterile) and called her his "private muse."
Dora Maar kept his paintings for herself until her death in 1997. They were souvenirs for their extraordinary love affair which made her famous forever. For him she was the "woman in tears" in many aspects. She suffered from his moods during their love affair. Also she hated the idea that in 1943 he had found a new lover, Françoise Gilot. Picasso and Paul Eluard sent Dora to their friend, the psychiatrist Jacques Lacan, who treated her with psychoanalysis. In Paris, still occupied by the Germans, Picasso left to her a drawing of 1915 as a good-bye gift in April 1944; it represents Max Jacob his close friend who had just died in the transit camp of Drancy after his arrest by the Nazis. He also left to her some still lifes and a house at Ménerbes in Provence.
[edit] After Picasso
After her long relationship with Picasso ended, Maar struggled to regain her emotional footing. This was complicated by the sudden death of her best friend, Nusch Eluard, wife of the poet Paul, in 1946. Likewise, her mother had also died unexpectedly in 1941, leaving Maar without family or long-time close friends.
But eventually Maar returned to her previous social circle, which included famous society hostesses and art patrons such as Marie-Laure de Noailles and Lise Deharme. She also found solace in Roman Catholicism. The author Mary Caws quotes Maar as saying "After Picasso, God." She spent her last years living between Paris and Provence in the house Picasso had given her.
As she aged she withdrew from society more and more to focus on her own paintings, which often were landscapes or had somewhat religious themes, as well as her own poetry. Several of her paintings were published to illustrate the 1961 book, Earth of the Mountain, by her friend the French poet Andre du Bouchet.
Although she had other male friends in her life, such as the writer James Lord, a gay man who shared her house in Provence with her and was her close friend in the 1950s, no one replaced Picasso for her.
Maar's poetry is notable for its themes of near-religious meditation. Caws in her 2000 book on Maar quotes several pieces such as one entitled "5 November," thought to have been written in 1970:
"Pure as a lake boredom
I hear its harmony
In the vast cold room
The nuance of light seems eternal
All is simple I admire
the full totality of objects."
Others were more openly religious:
"The soul that still yesterday wept is quiet -- its exile suspended
a country without art only nature
Memory magnolia pure so far off
I am blind
and made from a bit of earth
But your gaze never leaves me
And your angel keeps me."
By the 1980s she had few friends left, but still wrote poetry and returned to photography. An exhibition of her paintings in 1990 at the Marcel Fleiss gallery was a success, as was another in Valencia, Spain in 1995, just 2 years before her death. She died 89 years of age in Paris on July 16, 1997. She is buried with her family at Clamart Cemetery in Hauts de Seine.
[edit] Posthumous Events
On May 3, 2006, one of Picasso's portraits of her, Dora Maar au Chat (Dora Maar with Cat) was auctioned at Sotheby's at a closing price of US$95,216,000, making it the world's second most expensive painting ever sold at auction [1]. The winning bidder chose to remain anonymous, however it was later revealed that he was bidding on behalf of a Russian buyer.
Two Picasso art works depicting Dora Maar were stolen in France in 1999. First, an oil on canvas, "Dora Maar", was stolen from a boat on the French Riviera. The boat's crew was arrested and Lloyds offered a 530,000 euro reward. The painting is currently registered with the FBI's National Stolen Art File[2]. FBI reports that the picture was stolen from a Saudi yacht in Antibes between March 7-11, 1999. It's likely the owner was a Saudi royal Picasso aficionado.
Just weeks after the boat theft on the Riviera, on April 1, 1999, a bronze sculpture of the face of Dora Maar was taken from a public square in Paris.
[edit] External links
- http://www.whom.co.uk/dora/doramaar.htm (her portraits painted by Picasso)
- http://www.artcult.com/dor1.html
- http://home.hccnet.nl/att.leurs/kbd121.html (Dutch)
- New York Times: Mystery Bidder Spends $95 Million on a Picasso
- http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/arttheft/noticerecov.htm
- http://www.museum-security.org/reports/004299.html (report of the two 1999 thefts in France)
- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSmpid=46997149&GRid=26780352& (Find A Grave memorial for Dora Maar)
[edit] Literature
- (In Croatian) Mladen Urem. Janko Polić Kamov, Dora Maar i hrvatska avangarda (Janko Polić Kamov, Dora Maar and Croatian Avantgarde). 2006 Rijeka, Croatia. Rival publishing. ISBN 953-6700-06-09
- Mary Ann Caws. Dora Maar with & without Picasso. 2000 London. ISBN 0-500-51009-1
- James Lord. Picasso and Dora: A memoir. 1997 New York. ISBN 0-7538-0249-X
- (In French:) Alicia Dujovne Ortiz. Dora Maar : prisonnière du regard. 2003 Paris : Bernard Grasset. 358 p. ISBN 2-246-60791-4
- Mary Ann Caws. Picasso's Weeping Woman The Life and Art of Dora Maar, Bulfinch, 2000, ISBN 0-8212-2693-2
- Donald Goddard. Dora Maar: Photographer, Art Review, New York Art World, 2004.[3]
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