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Bust of a Woman (Dora Maar)
Pablo Picasso • Painting, 20.05.1938, 45×40.3 cm
Description of the artwork «Bust of a Woman (Dora Maar)»
“Bust of a woman”painted May 20, 1938, is a shining, jewel-like portrait of Picasso, which depicts his lover and muse Dora Maar. She was known for her amazing beauty and vibrant personality, and from the beginning of her relationship with the artist in 1935 until the break in 1945, he inspired him to a number of the greatest portraits. Her face has become the subject of countless distortions, exaggerations and abstractions - Picasso again and again returned to the motive of a seated woman, capturing various psychological nuances and expressions.
Henrietta Theodora Markovich, born in Paris in 1907, grew up in Argentina and shortened her name to Dora Maar. At the age of 19, she returned to the capital of France, where she studied painting and photography. In the early 1930s, Maar joined the group of surrealists with whom she showed her photographs at the International Surrealist Exhibition in Tenerife in 1935 and in London a year later. Bizarre and independent, she posed forMan ray and the Brassai, who were fascinated by her. Dora herself took pictures of several artists, writers and poets, including Willow tangi. She also showed political activity, in particular thanks to her relationship with the writer and philosopher Georges Bataille, with whom she had a romantic relationship before Picasso.
“Woman's Bust”, written at the peak of the relationship between Maar and Picasso, is one of the best in a series of colorful chest portraits in which Dora wears bright hats. Her dark hair is tucked behind her ear, a richly decorated red hat flaunts on her head, the dress stands out against a luminous white background. The painting is saturated with dazzling stripes of pink, glowing orange and yellow, as well as colder shades of turquoise, blue and white, which intertwine and merge inside the composition. Dora's head, composed of boldly prescribed faces and lines, radiates energy, cheerfulness and love.
The picture demonstrates the highest skill of Picasso in rethinking the human face and its transmission in its own radical and unique pictorial language. As in the case of previous lovers, he first absorbed the image of Dora, depicting her in a series of intimate sketches, and only at the end of 1936 the girl's face began to be distorted in the artist's works. Gradually, this stylization and deformation intensified, reaching a peak in the series “The Crying Woman” in October 1937.
Picasso continued to obsessively distort, deform, and deconstruct Dora's image. In “Woman's Bust”, her face is no longer whole and voluminous, but divided into a complex network of fragments and faces of color, lines and patterns. Although Picasso portrayed the model in profile, he included both eyes in the image - this was the dominant feature of his portraits of 1937 and 1938. With these works, the artist formed a new concept of portraiture, avoiding volumetric images in favor of a flattened and stylized composition of line and color.
Together, Picasso and Dora survived one of the most turbulent and tragic decades of the 20th century, witnessing the rise of fascism, the outbreak of the civil war in Spain and World War II, as well as the grim realities of life in occupied Paris. Despite this difficult time, Dora inspired the artist to a striking surge of creativity, serving as his muse and collaborator. Photos taken by her in the studio of Picasso illustrate this period of high productivity, showing rows of canvases folded in the workshop. In one of the most famous photographs taken in 1939, one can see many paintings with female heads lined up along the wall in the studio. Many of them are currently kept in famous museum collections around the world. In the center of the photo you can see a bright hat and sharp forms of “Woman's Bust”. This portrait remained in the artist’s personal collection for many years and was one of the paintings included in the book “Picasso's Works” by David Douglas Duncan. This work, published in 1961, opened to the public many previously unseen works that were stored by the author.
In 2016, “Woman's Bust” was first auctioned and sold for 22.6 million US dollars.
Author: Vlad Maslov
Henrietta Theodora Markovich, born in Paris in 1907, grew up in Argentina and shortened her name to Dora Maar. At the age of 19, she returned to the capital of France, where she studied painting and photography. In the early 1930s, Maar joined the group of surrealists with whom she showed her photographs at the International Surrealist Exhibition in Tenerife in 1935 and in London a year later. Bizarre and independent, she posed forMan ray and the Brassai, who were fascinated by her. Dora herself took pictures of several artists, writers and poets, including Willow tangi. She also showed political activity, in particular thanks to her relationship with the writer and philosopher Georges Bataille, with whom she had a romantic relationship before Picasso.
“Woman's Bust”, written at the peak of the relationship between Maar and Picasso, is one of the best in a series of colorful chest portraits in which Dora wears bright hats. Her dark hair is tucked behind her ear, a richly decorated red hat flaunts on her head, the dress stands out against a luminous white background. The painting is saturated with dazzling stripes of pink, glowing orange and yellow, as well as colder shades of turquoise, blue and white, which intertwine and merge inside the composition. Dora's head, composed of boldly prescribed faces and lines, radiates energy, cheerfulness and love.
The picture demonstrates the highest skill of Picasso in rethinking the human face and its transmission in its own radical and unique pictorial language. As in the case of previous lovers, he first absorbed the image of Dora, depicting her in a series of intimate sketches, and only at the end of 1936 the girl's face began to be distorted in the artist's works. Gradually, this stylization and deformation intensified, reaching a peak in the series “The Crying Woman” in October 1937.
Picasso continued to obsessively distort, deform, and deconstruct Dora's image. In “Woman's Bust”, her face is no longer whole and voluminous, but divided into a complex network of fragments and faces of color, lines and patterns. Although Picasso portrayed the model in profile, he included both eyes in the image - this was the dominant feature of his portraits of 1937 and 1938. With these works, the artist formed a new concept of portraiture, avoiding volumetric images in favor of a flattened and stylized composition of line and color.
Together, Picasso and Dora survived one of the most turbulent and tragic decades of the 20th century, witnessing the rise of fascism, the outbreak of the civil war in Spain and World War II, as well as the grim realities of life in occupied Paris. Despite this difficult time, Dora inspired the artist to a striking surge of creativity, serving as his muse and collaborator. Photos taken by her in the studio of Picasso illustrate this period of high productivity, showing rows of canvases folded in the workshop. In one of the most famous photographs taken in 1939, one can see many paintings with female heads lined up along the wall in the studio. Many of them are currently kept in famous museum collections around the world. In the center of the photo you can see a bright hat and sharp forms of “Woman's Bust”. This portrait remained in the artist’s personal collection for many years and was one of the paintings included in the book “Picasso's Works” by David Douglas Duncan. This work, published in 1961, opened to the public many previously unseen works that were stored by the author.
In 2016, “Woman's Bust” was first auctioned and sold for 22.6 million US dollars.
Author: Vlad Maslov
