images through photomontage and photocollage, a
method of cutting, pasting, and rephotographing.
Maar also became involved in leftist anti-Fascist
political groups such as Masses and contre-Attaque,
through which she met Surrealist poet Andre ́Breton
and photographer Man Ray. Maar photographed
many of the Surrealist artists, and she and Man Ray
worked together to illustrate the poet Paul Eluard’s
Le Temps De ́borde.It was Eluard who, late in 1935,
introduced Maar and Picasso on the set ofLe Crime
de Monsieur Lange, the socialist-inspired film written
by Jean Renoir and Jacques Pre ́vert. Although Maar
remembered this brief meeting, Picasso did not; and
Eluard’s friend Jean-Paul Crespelle’s account of the
meeting in the Cafe ́de Deux Magots in Saint Ger-
main, a famed Left Bank meeting place for artists,
writers, and intellectuals, has become the accepted
meeting place. Maar was engaged in a dangerous
game—flinging a knife between her fingers. At times
she missed and, according to Crespelle, ‘‘a drop of
blood appeared between the roses embroidered on
her black gloves.’’ Fascinated by Maar, Picasso
sought her expertise in printing photographic proofs
from glass plates (cliche ́verre).
Mary Ann Caws has pointed out inPicasso’s
Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar
that the two main themes in Maar’s work—fashion
and the avant-garde, and the street life of the impo-
verished—reflect the ‘‘constant pull between the
two sides of her character, between her exuberance
and her self-constraint.’’ Her political activism also
emerged in her work, especially her set photogra-
phy forLe Crime de Monsieur Lange.
Dora Maar’s paradoxical impulses can also be
identified through the early work she did for erotic
magazines and the extreme Catholicism she turned to
in later life. Again quoting Caws, Maar ‘‘turned from
Picasso to God.’’ Another of her themes was the
isolation of humanity. Maar photographed lone fig-
ures in the streets of London, Paris, and Barcelona.
These images are considered metaphors for her own
situation by some scholars because, after her breakup
with Picasso, she eventually became a recluse.
Picasso’s and Maar’s tumultuous relationship
took place between 1936–1944. After the defenseless
Spanish town of Guernica was bombed by the Ger-
man Condor Squadron on Sunday, 26 April, 1937,
Picasso began painting his monumental mural of the
same title. He had been commissioned to create the
mural for the Spanish Pavilion in the Paris Universal
Exposition that would open May 1937, but had pre-
viously been uninspired.Guernicahas become what
many scholars believe is his masterpiece. His inspira-
tion came from the expressions he read on Maar’s
face as she learned about the attack, inspiring the
‘‘Weeping Woman’’ image inGuernicaas well as
other paintings. Maar was the only person Picasso
permitted in the studio during the five-week gesta-
tion of the painting; he even allowed her to paint a
few strokes. Brassaı ̈had previously served as Picas-
so’s official photographer, but now Maar chronicled
the master and the development of the masterpiece
with her camera, yet she abandoned photography
thereafter because of Picasso’s consistent belittling
of her talent. Maar was also the subject of a number
of Picasso portraits. InDora Maar Seated(1937), the
youthful Maar appears confident and optimistic.
As the war in Europe intensified and France became
occupied by Germany, the Maar/Picasso relationship
deteriorated. Maar had been devoted to Picasso, tak-
ing a back seat to him personally and professionally.
When he left her for Franc ̧oise Gillot, she suffered a
nervous breakdown. Eventually receiving psychiatric
treatement from the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan,
Maar became more self-confident and composed.
She resumed her friendship with Brassaı ̈,madenew
friends, and continued painting. In the 1980s, in her
seventies, Maar returned to photography.
Picasso never left her totally, and Maar was
never able to recover fully from his rejection; she
maintained that she was not his mistress, but he
was her master. Although he had tormented her,
she was the one woman in his life whose intellectual
capacity was equal to his. She turned to religion for
solace and kept mementoes of their seven years
together throughout her long life.
Illustrating Bazin’s book was Maar’s first profes-
sional work, and illustrating Andre ́and du Bouchet’s
poem,Earth of the Mountain, was her last (1961).
Maar exhibited her work extensively during the for-
ties. Collector/critic Heinz Berggruen has established
a new museum in the Western Stoler Building, part of
the Charlottenburg Palace Complex, in Berlin, where
the work of Dora Maar is featured in one room.
MarianneBergerWoods
Seealso:Brassaı ̈; Cartier-Bresson, Henri; Man Ray;
Manipulation; Photography in France; SurrealismBiography
Born Henrietta The ́odora Markovitch 22 November 1907
in Paris to an immigrant Yugoslav architect and a
French Catholic housewife. Childhood spent in Buenos
Aires where her father was involved in numerous con-
struction projects. Fluent in French and Spanish, which
later endeared her to Picasso. At 19, returned to Paris to
study painting and photography in Paris at the Acade-
mie Julian and the E ́cole de Photographie. Her painting
lessons in Andre ́Lhote’s atelier brought her in contact
with Cartier-Bresson, and it was during this period thatMAAR, DORA