Dora Maar at Centre Pompidou

From 5 June to 29 July, the Centre Pompidou will present the largest retrospective dedicated to Dora Maar (1907-1997) ever held in France. Although a well-known figure, Dora Maar remains an enigmatic artist, with crucial aspects of her career as a professional and surrealist photographer in the 1930s and subsequently as a painter still to be discovered. The exhibition showcases the breadth and proficiency of her work in an effort to reposition her as an artist in her own right, rather than regard her as model or muse—roles that she has historically been relegated to as a result of her intimate relationship with Pablo Picasso. Featuring nearly 500 works and documents from more than 90 lenders, and drawing upon research conducted in the Dora Maar archives at the Musée National d'Art Moderne and other institutions, this landmark exhibition retraces the fascinating career of a free-spirited, independent Parisian intellectual: from opening her studio and working on her first fashion assignments to engaging with social and political concerns through her street photography, to exercising her surrealist vision and meeting Picasso on the cusp of his creating Guernica, to rediscovering painting later in life and returning to the artistic medium that first captivated her. Henriette Théodora Markovitch, known as Dora Maar, came from a bourgeois family and spent her early childhood in Argentina, where her father worked as an architect. By choosing photography as her profession, Dora Maar became linked with a generation of women whose artistic ambitions empowered and propelled their careers at a time when the market for illustrated press and advertising developed rapidly. Alongside Man Ray and Hans Bellmer, Dora Maar was one of few photographers whose work appeared in major surrealist exhibitions, such as the International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries in London and L'Exposition d'objets surréalistes at Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris, both held in 1936. Her most frequently displayed works of this period—Portrait d'Ubu and Le Simulateur (also dated 1936)—have since become her most iconic photographs. The close relationship, with Picasso, provided her with an opportunity to document the creation of Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica, in the spring of 1937. Through a series of photographs depicting the canvas at various stages prior to completion, she provided unprecedented insight into the painter's creative process. A mutual fascination between Picasso and Dora Maar resulted in a romantic and artistic dialogue that continued for approximately ten years and eventually encouraged Dora Maar to reinvent her professional career.