Surrealist photographer — photomontages, the Père Ubu armadillo, street work in Barcelona and London — who documented the painting of Guernica stage by stage, spent eight years as Picasso's partner and the model of the Weeping Woman, and said of those portraits: they are Picassos, not one is Dora Maar.
Before she was anyone's model, Dora Maar was one of the few photographers the Surrealists admitted as one of their own. Born Henriette Théodora Markovitch in Paris in 1907 and raised partly in Buenos Aires, she ran a commercial studio with Pierre Kéfer, shot street photography in the slums of Barcelona and London, and made the movement's most reproduced photographic images — the photomontage titled 29, rue d'Astorg, with its faceless figure seated in a warped vaulted corridor, and Père Ubu, the monstrous armadillo foetus that became Surrealism's unofficial mascot at its 1936 exhibitions. Her politics were as active as her camera: she signed the anti-fascist manifestos of the mid-1930s and moved in the leftist theatre of the Groupe Octobre.[1]
In late 1935, at Les Deux Magots, Paul Éluard introduced her to Pablo Picasso. The eight years that followed bound two bodies of work together: she found and photographed the atelier at 7 rue des Grands-Augustins where Guernica was painted, documenting the mural stage by stage in 1937 — the only such record of a Picasso masterpiece — and he painted her, over and over, as the Weeping Woman. Her verdict on those canvases, delivered years later, is the necessary caption: 'All portraits of me are lies. They're Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar.' The relationship's end left a breakdown, electroshock, treatment by Jacques Lacan, a turn to Catholic faith and to painting, and five decades of deliberate withdrawal in Paris and Ménerbes. She died in 1997; the world rediscovered the photographer in the estate sales and retrospectives that followed.
Maar was born on 22 November 1907 in Paris to a Croatian architect father whose work took the family to Buenos Aires for most of her childhood. Back in Paris from 1926 she trained in photography and painting — the era's schools sent women toward the camera — and by 1931 ran a studio with the designer-photographer Pierre Kéfer out of his parents' garden at Neuilly, signing work Kéfer-Dora Maar: fashion, advertising, nudes, portraits of the avant-garde.[2]
The personal work was harder and stranger. She photographed the unemployed and the blind in the Zone — the shantytown belt ringing Paris where its old fortifications had been demolished — and in Depression Barcelona and London; and she built photomontages that put staircases inside vaulted corridors and hands emerging from shells. Père Ubu — an armadillo foetus shot close, named for Alfred Jarry's tyrant — hung at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London and became the movement's unofficial totem. She was one of a handful of photographers the Surrealists exhibited at all, and the politics matched: her signature is on the anti-fascist tracts of 1934–36.[2]
Éluard made the introduction at Les Deux Magots in the winter of 1935–36 — the famous anecdote, in which Maar stabs a penknife between her gloved fingers at the café table and Picasso asks to keep the blood-flecked glove, is told in many versions and is embellishment layered on a real café meeting. She was twenty-eight, established, fluent in his native Spanish; Pablo Picasso was fifty-four. It was Maar who found him the vast attic atelier at 7 rue des Grands-Augustins, and when the Spanish Republic commissioned a mural for the 1937 Paris exposition, she photographed Guernica at every stage of its painting — the only step-by-step photographic record of a Picasso masterpiece, published that year in Cahiers d'Art and indispensable to its study since.[3]
He painted her constantly — seated, reading, and above all weeping, in the Weeping Woman series of 1937 that fused her face with the war grief of Guernica. She rejected the equation to the end of her life: the tears were his subject, not her character, and 'all portraits of me are lies. They're Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar.' At his urging she largely set the camera aside for painting — a loss photography historians have been counting ever since.[3]
The relationship corroded through the war — Picasso's cruelties, the arrival of his next lover, Françoise Gilot — and ended around 1943–46. Maar broke down in 1945: erratic public episodes that ended in police custody, a clinic, electroshock, then analysis with Jacques Lacan, who steered her out of the hospital and, by her account, toward the choice she made lifelong — art and God. 'After Picasso, only God,' the famous version runs. She converted to an intense Catholicism, kept the house at Ménerbes in the Luberon that had come to her from Picasso, and painted — austere abstract landscapes, a world away from both her Surrealism and his portraits.[3]
The withdrawal lasted five decades and was a decision, not a disappearance: she showed paintings occasionally, corresponded, and refused most interviews about Picasso. She died in Paris on 16 July 1997, at eighty-nine. The estate sales of 1998–99 disgorged the photographs, negatives and Picassos she had kept, and the retrospectives that followed — Centre Pompidou, Getty and Tate in 2019–20 among them — restored the order of her biography: photographer first.[4]
Maar's best-known photograph as an artist is Portrait d'Ubu, made in 1936 and shown at the Surrealist exhibitions in London and Paris that year.[1]
It is a close view of a small, damp, clawed creature with an enormous eye, filling the frame, apparently alive and apparently in distress. The title borrows Alfred Jarry's grotesque king Ubu, which gave the Surrealists a name for it without explaining anything.
Maar refused for sixty years to say what the animal was. The usual guess is the foetus of an armadillo, seen in a jar. She would confirm nothing, on the grounds that the picture worked because the viewer could not place it, which is exactly why it became a Surrealist emblem.[1]
Alongside the street photography Maar built pictures in the darkroom, combining negatives into scenes that cannot exist.
29 rue d'Astorg, from about 1936, puts a seated figure with a small distorted head into a vaulted arcade that curves away behind her, the whole thing tinted and airless. Others place children, hands or shells into architectural spaces at the wrong scale.[2]
The montages are the part of her work that fed most directly into Surrealist painting, and they were made with a commercial photographer's technical control. She had trained in a working studio and could do things in printing that most of the group's painters could only describe.[4]
Maar was politically active before she met Picasso, further left than most of the Surrealists, and it is one of the reasons her early photography looks the way it does.[2]
She was close to the writer Georges Bataille and involved with Contre-Attaque, the short-lived anti-fascist group he and André Breton formed in 1935. She signed manifestos, joined committees against fascism in Spain and Germany, and photographed unemployment and poverty because she had gone looking for it.[3]
Dora Maar's political activity did not survive the war. After 1945 she stopped signing manifestos and taking public positions, saw few people, and spent long stretches alone in Paris and at Ménerbes.[3]
Maar gave up photography for painting around 1940, at Picasso's urging, and kept at it for the rest of her life.[4]
The early canvases are portraits and still lifes in a manner close to his. From the 1950s she moved to landscape, mostly the country around Ménerbes in the Luberon, and then to something increasingly abstract: dark, thinly painted, small in scale.[4]
She also wrote poems, some of which were published late, and returned in the 1980s, in her seventies, to camera-less photographic images made by laying objects on the paper. She showed occasionally and sold rarely. When she died in 1997 the apartment on the rue de Savoie was found to be full of unseen work, and the sale that followed took two years to catalogue.[1]
Born Henriette Théodora Markovitch in Paris on 22 November; childhood largely in Buenos Aires.
Opens the Kéfer-Dora Maar studio with Pierre Kéfer — fashion and advertising outside, Surrealism and street work inside.
Becomes close to the writer Georges Bataille and moves in the political circles around him.
Paul Éluard introduces her to Picasso at Les Deux Magots in the winter of 1935–36.
Joins Contre-Attaque, the anti-fascist group formed by Bataille and André Breton.
Père Ubu, the armadillo photograph, hangs at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London and becomes the movement's totem.
Makes Portrait d'Ubu and shows it at the Surrealist exhibitions in London and Paris.
Makes the photomontage 29 rue d'Astorg.
Photographs Guernica stage by stage at the rue des Grands-Augustins atelier she had found for Picasso; he paints her as the Weeping Woman.
Gives up photography for painting, at Picasso's urging.
Breakdown after the relationship's end: clinic, electroshock, then analysis with Jacques Lacan.
Turns to Catholicism and painting; the house at Ménerbes becomes her retreat.
Turns to landscape, painting the country around Ménerbes in the Luberon.
Returns to camera-less photographic images, made by laying objects on the paper, and writes poems.
Dies in Paris on 16 July, aged eighty-nine, after five decades of chosen withdrawal.
The contents of her apartment on the rue de Savoie are catalogued for sale, revealing decades of unseen work.
The Centre Pompidou–Getty–Tate retrospective restores the photographer to first place in her own story.
Partner of · 1936–1943
Introduced by Paul Eluard at Les Deux Magots in the winter of 1935-36. She found him the Grands-Augustins atelier and photographed Guernica's painting stage by stage; he painted her as the Weeping Woman. Her verdict on the portraits: they are Picassos, not one is Dora Maar.
Art & literary movement · 1924–1966
One of the few photographers the movement exhibited as its own: the 29 rue d'Astorg photomontage and Pere Ubu, the armadillo that became Surrealism's unofficial totem at the 1936 exhibitions.
A French photographer and painter (1907–1997) — one of the few photographers the Surrealists exhibited as their own, maker of the Père Ubu armadillo image and the movement's best photomontages, and a documentary photographer of Depression-era Barcelona and London. She was also Pablo Picasso's partner from 1936 to about 1943, the model of his Weeping Woman paintings, and the photographer of Guernica in progress.
Yes — uniquely. She found Picasso the attic atelier at 7 rue des Grands-Augustins, and when he painted Guernica there for the Spanish Republic's pavilion in 1937 she photographed the mural at each stage of composition. The sequence, published in Cahiers d'Art that year, is the only step-by-step photographic record of a Picasso masterpiece and remains essential to Guernica scholarship.
She was its model; she refused to be its meaning. Picasso painted her through 1937 as the Weeping Woman, grief-struck faces feeding off Guernica's war mourning. Maar's own verdict, quoted for the rest of her life: 'All portraits of me are lies. They're Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar.' Friends corroborated her — the tears were his invention, not her temperament.
A collapse in 1945 — clinic, electroshock — and then analysis with Jacques Lacan, who moved her treatment from hospital to couch. She emerged with the two commitments that filled the rest of her life, compressed in the line attributed to her: 'After Picasso, only God.' A convert to intense Catholicism, she painted austere abstract landscapes at Ménerbes in the Luberon and in Paris for five reclusive decades, dying in 1997.
Largely at Picasso's urging: he held painting above photography and pushed her toward the easel during their years together, and she set the camera mostly aside after the late 1930s. Photography historians count it among the era's real losses; the 1998 estate sales and the 2019 Pompidou–Getty–Tate retrospective put the photographic work back at the centre of her reputation.
Dora Maar's best-known photograph, made in 1936 and shown at the Surrealist exhibitions in London and Paris that year. It is a close view of a small clawed creature with an enormous eye, filling the frame. Maar refused for sixty years to say what the animal was; the usual guess is an armadillo foetus. The title borrows Alfred Jarry's grotesque king Ubu.
Yes, and she was admitted to the group as an artist rather than as anyone's companion. Besides the street photography she built photomontages in the darkroom, combining negatives into impossible scenes — 29 rue d'Astorg, from about 1936, sets a figure with a distorted head into a curving vaulted arcade.
Very, and before she met Picasso. She was close to Georges Bataille, joined Contre-Attaque, the anti-fascist group he formed with André Breton in 1935, signed manifestos and worked on committees against fascism in Spain and Germany. She photographed poverty because she had gone looking for it.
She painted, for more than fifty years. The early canvases are close to his manner; from the 1950s she moved to the landscape around Ménerbes and then to small, dark, increasingly abstract work. She also wrote poems and returned to camera-less photographic images in her eighties, showing occasionally and selling rarely.
Associated with · 1934
One of the few photographers the movement exhibited as its own: the 29 rue d'Astorg photomontage and Pere Ubu, the armadillo that became Surrealism's unofficial totem at the 1936 exhibitions.
Partner of · 1936–1943
Introduced by Paul Eluard at Les Deux Magots in the winter of 1935-36. She found him the Grands-Augustins atelier and photographed Guernica's painting stage by stage; he painted her as the Weeping Woman. Her verdict on the portraits: they are Picassos, not one is Dora Maar.
Worked at · 1937
Dora Maar photographed Guernica in progress in this studio from 11 May to 4 June 1937, state by state — the reason it is the most closely documented major painting ever made.
The sources below include biographies, scholarly essays, interviews, and primary materials that informed this page. They reflect both the historical record and ongoing critical conversations about Dora Maar and their work.
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