Dora Maar

The sitter for this painting and the two to the right is artist Dora Maar, who was also Picasso’s romantic partner and muse. When they met in the mid-1930s, she was at the height of her career as a successful commercial photographer and Surrealist artist. She was known for her photomontages, many of them erotic and mysterious, with dramatic lighting, close cropping, and startling juxtapositions. A left-wing activist who used her talents to document the struggles of the poor in the streets of London, Spain, and Paris, Maar signed her name to numerous manifestos and petitions, a daring thing for a woman in her day. 

Maar and Picasso were together for nine years. They were both politically engaged, and Maar documented Picasso’s work on his famous painting Guernica (1937), inspired by the Spanish Civil War. The rise of fascism in Spain and the assault on the left-leaning Basque region troubled Picasso deeply; he projected onto his images of Maar his own anguish and that of the Spanish people.