Dora Maar

Dora Maar studied photography and painting

Dora Maar was born Henriette Theodora Markovitch in Tours on 22 November 1907. The daughter of the Croatian architect Joseph Markovitch (1874-1969) and native French Louise Julie Voisin (1877-1942), she spent her childhood first in Paris and then Buenos Aires, where her father worked for the Austrian-Hungarian embassy in Argentina. She returned to Paris in 1926, studied painting and photography at the Union centrale des arts décoratifs, the École de photograohie and the Académie Julian, and also worked in the studio of the Cubist artist André Lhote (1885-1962). One fellow colleague was Jacqueline Lamba (1910-1993), the later second wife of André Breton (1896-1966). It was during this period that Markovitch changed her name to Dora Maar. In the early 1930s, she concentrated primarily on photography and worked as an assistant to Man Ray (1890-1976) before opening the photo studio Kéfer – Dora Maar in 1934 with the photographer Pierre Kéfer.

An icon of Surrealist photography

Dora Maar was in a relationship with the philosopher Georges Bataille (1897-1962), who ushered her into the surrealist circles, whilst Brassaï (1899-1984), whom she shared a darkroom with, introduced her to various photographers and photojournalists. She created glamorous fashion and advertising shots, photographed for erotic magazines and - in sharp contrast to her other work - also took socially critical pictures of homeless people and social outsiders in Barcelona, London and Paris. Dora Maar also became a firm member of the Surrealist movement, and her image of an armadillo embryo - created under the influence of Alfred Jarry's (1873-1907) theatre play King Ubu – would become an icon of surrealist photography. When Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) saw a portrait of Dora Maar in Man Ray's studio, he was fascinated by her beauty and had Paul Éluard (1895-1952) introduce him to the young artist at the Café Les Deux Magots. Dora Maar became the most famous of the Spanish painter's seven wives, and documented the work in his studio in photographs, including the creation of the legendary painting Guernica.

Dark years after her separation from Picasso

Dora Maar gave up photography for Picasso and began to paint. When the egocentric painter turned to the 21-year-old Françoise Gilot (1921-2023), Maar's world collapsed, and she fell into a deep depression that led to her being admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she had to endure questionable treatment methods such as electroshock therapy. After her release, she lived in seclusion in a house in Provence that Picasso had left to her. In her search for stability, she focussed on religious themes and painted landscapes and still lifes, financing her livelihood not least by selling some of Picasso's old pictures. It was not until later that she turned to photography again, although she limited herself to working with old negatives and did not take any new pictures. She also experimented with the light graphics – rayograms - conceived by Man Ray. Following a fall, she was confined to her bed from 1994 onwards.

Dora Maar died in Paris in 1997.