A Paris auction house will put a collection of 750 photographs taken by French photographer Dora Maar, known to be one of Pablo Picasso’s master ideas, for sale from her home next month.
The set of photos, produced between the 1920s and 1940s, had never been seen before by the public.
The majority of the photos were taken during the decade that Mar, who died in 1997, spent with the Spanish painter. The subjects in the photographs range from anonymous figures taken on the streets of Paris to artists and creatives who shared the same avant-garde circles. The collection, which will be sold during two live auctions on June 27 and 28 at Artcurial in Paris, is expected to fetch 700,000 – 800,000 euros ($880,000 – 1 million).
Related Articles
Until recently, Mare was not known to the general public for her private art, with many long remembering her for being one of the deserted former Picasso fans – one of a handful of women, including Marie-Therese Walter and François Gilot – and for being the main subject of his famous series. The Crying Woman, 1937.
Marr’s reputation changed when a 2019 survey of her work at the Pompidou Center, which traveled to Tate Modern in London and the Getty Center in Los Angeles, shed light on the artist.
Since the late 1990s, the collection of negatives and contact papers that will be offered for sale have been kept in a box and set aside with Mar’s personal belongings inherited by her French and Croatian grandchildren.
“No one paid any attention to it and it remained unseen until recently, after recent exhibitions and artist reviews,” said Antoine Romand, Artcurial Photography Specialist. ARTnews By email. Previous sales were held in 1988 and 1999 of paintings and photographs from the estate of Mare in Paris.
The representative of Artcurial refused to specify the reason for the decision of the heirs to sell part of the Maar archive.
Highlights from the archival collection include two photographs of Picasso sitting outside, taken in 1936 and 1937, respectively. Among the items for sale are other black and white photographs of artist Noche Eluard, topless on a beach in Antibes, and scenes of street life in Paris and London. Each is expected to sell for between €1,500 and €3,500 ($1,600 to $3,800).
Through her work, Marr has produced fashion photographs, advertising campaigns, studio portraits, street scenes, documentaries, and surreal composites of surrealist portraits, but she is also considered a collaborator in documenting Picasso’s famous wartime works in 1937, GuernicaInspired by the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.
Born in Paris, Marr spent her childhood in Buenos Aires, eventually returning to the French capital in the 1920s to study photography. She later continued photographing the Great Depression throughout European cities and opened her own photography studio in Paris in the early 1930s before meeting Picasso.
The sale comes with increased interest in unknown players in the surrealist art movement. The traveling show Surrealism Beyond Borders, now on view at the Tate Modern in London, takes a global view of the movement and showcases Maar’s work. Meanwhile, Marr’s career is revisited as scholars explore the politics of gender in artist-inspirer relationships.
[ad_2]
