Assia by Dora
Maar, 1934
Parigi, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne/Centre de création industrielle © Dora Maar by SIAE 2014 |
Dora
Maar
Vendeuses et vendeur riant derrière leur étal de charcuterie, 1933 © Dora Maar, by SIAE 2014 © Joan Marques |
Dora Maar
No Dole, Work wanted (Pas d´aumône. Je veux du travail), Londres, 1934 Parigi, collezione privata © Dora Maar, by SIAE 2014 Photo credit: Xavier GRANDSART |
Dora
Maar
29, rue d´Astorg, 1936 circa Parigi, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne/Centre de création industrielle © Dora Maar by SIAE 2014 |
Daar's political involvement coincided with her joining the Surrealist group. In addition to taking the side of the deprived, she was fascinated by the magical and the supernatural, and attracted by the Surrealists' focus on automatic thinking, folly, children's art, the primitive world and eroticism. Her talent was "revealing the strangeness of everyday life." Maar alternated experimental photography with commercial work, producing portraits, nudes, landscapes, fashion and advertising photographs, and street scenes in Paris, Barcelona and London.
Man
Ray
Ady Fidelin, Marie Cuttoli et son mari, Man Ray, Picasso et Dora Maar assis sur les marches d'un parc, 1937 © Man Ray Trust/ Adagp, Paris © RMN – Grand Palais / Franck Raux |
On January 7, 1936 Paul Eluard introduced Dora Maar to to the legendary Pablo Picasso at the Café les Deux Magots. Picasso was married, but estranged from his wife, the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, and had a new-born daughter with his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, who would later hang herself four years after his death.
Portrait de Dora Maar aux
petites mains, by Man Ray, 1936
New York, Collezione Debra e Jean Bensadoun Photo credit: Alister Alexander /Camerarts |
The Weeping Woman by Picasso, 1937, Tate Collection |
In addition to working with Picasso as he began Guernica and through its completion -- Maar's step-by-step photographic documentation of the masterpiece is part of the current exhibition -- Dora Maar was the model for Picasso's renowned Weeping Woman, an image which he obsessed over. It would appear in about 60 of his drawings, prints and paintings throughout 1937. (That image above is not part of the exhibition; I am including it for illustrative purposes.)
"For me she's the weeping woman. For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one."
Tête de Femme (Dora Maar) by Pablo Picasso,
1939
Artemundi Group, courtesy of Javier Lumbreras Photo credit: Jorge Parra © Pablo Picasso by SIAE 2014 |
Dora Maar had a nervous breakdown when the relationship ended, and became a recluse who delved into the Catholic religion. In 1958, she traveled to Venice in the company of the American author, James Lord. She died in 1997 at the age of 89. According to the National Gallery of Victoria, after her death:
"... it was discovered that Dora Maar had kept everything connected to her relationship with Picasso, such as her Rolleiflex camera that was central to her commercial photographic practice, and therefore instrumental in Picasso's dynamic experiments with photography. Other objects included a fragment of stained paper labelled Picasso's blood, a magical sculpture of her beloved terrier torn from a napkin by her lover, and a copy of L'Humanite from 5 October 1944 announcing Picasso's allegiance to the French Communist Party. The personalised nature of these precious objects provided new and intriguing insights into Picasso's inventive art practice, as well as one of the most artistically inspiring relationships of the 20th century."
Ritsue
Mishima,
Argo, 2013 Photo credit: Francesco Barasciutti |
The works of the Japanese glass artist, Ritsue Mishima, are scattered throughout the Dora Maar - Despite Picasso exhibition, which, itself, is on the first floor, and entwined with the permanent Fortuny pieces on display, creating an exciting environment. Tras Forma presents Ritsue Mishima's latest creations based on the thousand-year-old tradition of making glass in Venice, and after a careful analysis of the modus operandi of Mariano Fortuny.
Barbara Paganin
Spilla n.12, 2011 – 2013 Argento ossidato, ritratto smaltato su rame, vetro, porcellana, quarzo di luna, oro Fotografia di Alice Pavesi Fiori |
Anne-Karin Furunes
Crystal Images VII, 2013 Archivio Fortuny, 1910 ca. tela dipinta e perforata |
Diane Arbu
Patriotic Young Man with a Flag, N.Y.C., N.Y.C. 1967 Mart, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto Collezione M. Trevisan |
"...photography has also liberated [women] from some difficult manual aspects that for a long time were considered the prerogative of men, offering itself above all as an abstract, conceptual poetic language."The Venetian Mario Trevisan has collected many of the great gals, from the contemporary Diane Arbus, Nan Golden and Cindy Sherman, to Julia Margaret Cameron working in the 1870s. Also on display are photographs by Lisette Model, a Jewish Austrian who moved to the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War where she opened her famous school of photography, and whose best known pupil was Diane Arbus.
Spring at Palazzo Fortuny opened today, International Women's Day, and is a MUST SEE.
SPRING AT PALAZZO FORTUNY
Doro Maar
DESPITE PICASSO
Anne-Karin Furunes
SHADOWS
Ritsue Mishima
TRAS FORMA
Barbara Paganin
OPEN MEMORY
From the Collection of Mario Trevisan
THE AMAZONS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
March 8 to July 14, 2014
Go to Palazzo Fortuny for more information.
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog
Only Dora Maar, the beautiful, enigmatic photographer, was allowed to document the progression of Pablo Picasso's masterpiece, Guernica, which he painted in response to the bombing of the Basque village during the Spanish Civil war in 1937.
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