Last Saturday afternoon, I spent my day with Picasso and his women, at the AGO exhibit – PICASSO: Masterpieces from The Musee National Picasso, Paris. It was amazing! I know a lot of people, when they think of Picasso, they think of his abstract, cubist art. Picasso in reality was much more than just a cubist painter; in fact, he was an artist of many different styles and mediums. Walking through the gallery space I was reminded of this. It had been a long time since I had seen so much of his work in one space. Like I said before, it was Amazing! One thing I like about Picasso is his ability to tell a story with his work. He is able to dive deep into the subject matter and reveal it in such style. One portrait of Dora Maar that I had seen once before at the Picasso Museum in Paris, France and was also displayed at this exhibit, was a piece I could not get out of my mind. I found myself revisiting this portrait a few times, and each time I felt like time had stopped. This portrait, like many of his portraits, reveals more than a painting, but a person as well. It feels like Picasso has tapped in to a bit of the subject’s soul. Picasso is revealing Dora Maar to us, as she sat for him, through flashes of perspective. I could not help but wonder more about who Dora Maar was. After my visit, I found out that she was a photographer/artist/poet and one of the many lovers of Picasso. Perhaps Picasso’s portraits are so intense because of his relationships with the subjects, as many of his portraits are of his lovers. Using Picasso’s portraits of Dora Maar as proof, there is no doubt in my mind that Picasso and Dora Maar’s relationship was intense, raw and beautiful. What a lot of people neglect to notice is Dora Maar’s portraits of Picasso. These portraits have a beauty and truth to them that could only have stemmed from their unique relationship.
Portrait of Dora Maar, by Picasso (1937), at the AGO exhibit –
PICASSO: Masterpieces from The Musee National Picasso, Paris.
Other Picasso Portraits of Dora Maar:
Portraits of Picasso, by Dora Maar
Dora Maar is best known for her documentation of Picasso’s Guernica
1st State 
2nd State
3rd State 
4th State
Guernica by Picasso (1937) at Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
After Guernica, Picasso began a series of portraits called The Weeping Woman(1937). The final of the series is what I’ve chosen to show below and is part of the Tate collection. These paintings are Picasso’s continuing development of the crying woman with child in Guernica; what developed was beyond the events of the Spanish Civil War, but a singular, universal vision of suffering. The model for the Weeping Woman is Dora Maar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weeping_Woman
The Weeping Woman (1937), Tate Museum, Liverpool
Self Portraits
A Hollywood Movie of Picasso and Dora Maar,
during the making of Guernica(1937) is in the works. Gwyneth Paltrow will be playing Dora Maar and Antonio Banderas will be playing Picasso.
Please comment if you have anything to add to this. I would like to see other perspectives on this.
husher
culture track 