34 Facts About Dora Maar

Henriette Theodora Markovitch, known as Dora Maar, was a French photographer, painter, and poet.

Dora Maar's achievements earned him the honor of being decorated by Emperor Francis Joseph I, even though he was "the only architect who did not make a fortune in Buenos Aires".

Dora Maar enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academie Julian which had the advantage of offering the same instruction to women as to men.

Dora Maar frequented Andre Lhote's workshop where she met Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In 1935, Dora Maar was introduced to Pablo Picasso and became his companion and muse.

Dora Maar later acted as a model for his piece titled Monument a Apollinaire, a tribute to the late poet Guillaume Apollinaire.

Dora Maar's earliest surviving photographs were taken in the early 1920s while on a cargo ship going to the Cape Verde Islands.

Dora Maar's father assisted with her finances in this period of her life as she was establishing herself while trying to earn a living.

Dora Maar met the photographer Brassai with whom she shared the darkroom in the studio.

Dora Maar felt that art should represent the content of reality through links with intuitions or ideas, rather than visually reproduce the natural.

Dora Maar met Louis-Victor Emmanuel Sougez, a photographer working for advertising, archeology and artistic director of the newspaper L'Illustration, whom she considered a mentor.

Dora Maar had her first publication in the magazine Art et Metiers Graphiques in 1932.

Dora Maar participated in Participates in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, at the MoMA in New York the same year.

Surrealist concepts and interests often aligned with the ideas of the political left of the time and so Dora Maar became very politically active at this point in her life.

Dora Maar was involved in many Surrealist groups and often participated in demonstrations, convocations, and cafe conversations.

Dora Maar signed many manifestos, including one titled "When Surrealists were Right" in August 1935 which concerned the Congress of Paris, which had been held in March of that year.

Dora Maar first saw Pablo Picasso at the end of 1935 when she was taking promotional shots on the set of the Jean Renoir film The Crime of Monsieur Lange.

Dora Maar was captivated by him, but they did not formally meet.

Dora Maar was introduced to Picasso a few days later by their mutual friend Paul Eluard at Cafe des Deux Magots.

Dora Maar kept driving a small pointed pen-knife between her fingers into the wood of the table.

Picasso would ask Dora Maar to give him the gloves and would lock them up in the showcase he kept for his mementos.

Dora Maar photographed the successive stages of the creation of Guernica, painted by Picasso in his studio in the rue des Grands-Augustins from May to June 1937; Picasso used these photographs in his creative process.

Dora Maar was Picasso's principal model, and he often represented her in tears.

Dora Maar boosted Picasso's understanding of politics and taught him skills in photography.

Dora Maar introduced Picasso to the method of combining photography and printmaking, known as the cliche verre technique.

Dora Maar is very well known for her role as Picasso's lover, subject, and muse.

Dora Maar did not appreciate Picasso's depiction of her in this way.

In 1944, through the intermediary of Paul Eluard, Dora Maar met Jacques Lacan, who took care of her nervous breakdown through years of analysis, in which her mental health began to improve.

Dora Maar turned to the Catholic religion, met the painter Nicolas de Stael, and turned to abstract painting.

The painted works of Dora Maar remained unrecognized until their posthumous sale, organized in 1999, which made the public and professionals discover a very personal production that had never left her studio.

Dora Maar abandoned photography for painting alongside leaving Picasso and his influence, or rather the crushing presence of the painter, who had imposed on her a cubistic style.

Dora Maar spent her last years in her apartment in Rue de Savoie, in the Left Bank of Paris.

Dora Maar was buried in the Bois-Tardieu cemetery in Clamart.

Dora Maar was played by Samantha Colley in the 2018 season of Genius, which focuses on the life and art of Picasso.