Dora

Dora Maar (1907–1997) was an acclaimed Surrealist photographer when she met Picasso in 1935. By then, the painter was already familiar with Dora from Man Ray’s artistic photographs and from the circles who frequented art cafés. According to the anecdote, Dora Maar truly impressed Picasso for the first time when, in Café des Deux Magots, she took off her gloves and began a peculiar game: „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…” (Jean-Paul Crespelle in Caws, Mary Ann (2000). Picasso’s Weeping Woman : The Life and Art of Dora Maar. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. ISBN 9780821226933.)

This episode reveals a great deal about Dora’s character and her subsequent relationship with the painter, which was made even more turbulent by World War II and the German occupation of Paris. According to Picasso, he was unable to paint a smiling portrait of his sweetheart, who he saw as the weeping woman. Dora Maar and Picasso’s relationship ended in 1945 after the painter met Françoise Gilot. Dora suffered a nervous breakdown, but after being discharged from the hospital, she eventually returned to her art and began painting again. She later said of the works Picasso created of her: “Every portrait he made of me is a lie. They’re all Picassos. Not a single one is Dora Maar.”