Dora Maar dans un fauteuil (1939)

Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973)

Dora Maar dans un fauteuil (Dora Maar in an Armchair)
1939
Oil on canvas, 73.3 × 60.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of ArtNew York

Picasso painted this portrait of Surrealist photographer Dora Maar (1907–1997), then his lover, during their yearlong sojourn at Royan, a small town on France’s southern Atlantic coast, from which they witnessed the outbreak of World War II. Her face and body have been radically distorted. The garish background, with its irregular patterns that seem to tilt and sway, might represent the wallpaper that decorated their rooms at the Hôtel du Tigre. (MET)

See also:

• Maar, Dora (1907-1997)