The portrait of Dora Maar by artist Pablo Picasso was auctioned at Sotheby's Asia and also comes at a time when demand for Picasso in the region is at an all-time high following two consecutive auction records for the artist in Asia by the same auction house last year. Painted in the French tricolor of red, white and blue – and prominently signed and dated – it captures a true sense of Maar's personality and speaks eloquently of Picasso's feelings.
La love story between Dora Maar and Picasso is undoubtedly one of the most turbulent in the history of 1936th century art. Their relationship was one of intellectual exchange as well as intense passion, and his influence on the artist led to some of the boldest and most famous portraits of his career. Picasso met Maar, the Surrealist photographer, in early XNUMX, and was immediately mesmerized by her intellect and beauty, and her commanding presence. Although he was still romantically involved with Marie-Thérèse Walter and married to Olga Khokhlova at the time, Picasso was intimately involved with Maar. Unlike the more docile Marie-Thérèse, Maar was an artist, spoke Picasso's native Spanish and shared his intellectual and political concerns. During this dramatic period in his personal life, Picasso balanced Maar and Walter in an increasingly complex and harsh domestic environment. At the same time, world events were also reaching their climax and making themselves felt in the work of Picasso. When Picasso embarked on the great masterpiece Guernica – in response to the bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica in April 1937 – Maar witnessed as well as produced a photo-documentary of the work in progress. They will remain together until 1943.
Painted in 1939, when the European continent was on the verge of war, the portrait is particularly alluring and unusual in its quiet elegance, as many of Picasso's portraits of Dora Maar show her anguished and fractured face in a Cubist treatment in her feature comparisons.
Maar's arrival marked an important stylistic shift for Picasso which soon made itself felt in his art, with a sharp shift from the sweeping curvilinear forms of Marie-Thérèse Walter towards more sharply delineated forms that captured the essence of the many and often conflicting facets of Maar's Personality. With her head resting on her hand, in Dora Maar she looks thoughtfully towards the viewer, conveying a sense of characteristic intensity and gravity. This is only further contrasted by the fiery red background, a symbolic reference to Maar's equally passionate and vivacious character. The portrait shows Maar in a self-possessed and proud pose, her face captivating both contemplative and inscrutable. Her most striking features, powerfully rendered here, were her thick cloak of rich black hair—which she kept for a long time at Picasso's request—and her dazzling, soulful eyes. Picasso's choice of a panel for Dora Maar was of artistic importance. Throughout his career, Picasso often selected different media to allow full domination of his creative freedom, switching effortlessly between canvas, panel, paper or any other medium he felt compelled to employ. He began panel painting during his Blue Period and Surrealist period, and continued to do so into the 50s. Dora Maar belongs to a small group of oils on panel painted between 27 and 29 March 1939, including specimens held at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The painting was last offered at auction in 1988, when it graced the cover of the sales catalogue.
With an estimate exceeding $17,6 million, Dora Maar will be offered alongside a large selection of modern period works, by artists such as Chen Yifei, Wu Guanzhong, Chu Teh -Chun and Zao Wou-Ki – in the Modern Evening auction on April 27. The sale will be complemented by an equally broad and strong offering of contemporary art in an evening auction the same day, led by Louise Bourgeois' (nearly) seven-foot Spider IV, the first Spider by the artist to be auctioned in Asia.
