Lithograph ; Marais parchment paper ; 36 x 27 cm in light of passe - partout of 47 x 38 cm;
Publisher: Henri Paul Jonquières ; executed: Atelier Duval; typography: Priester Feres.
The lithograph on display is from the only ever publication of these 40 drawings by Picasso in 1957, with the permission of Dora Maar and thanks to the sharing of her only piece with these drawings with the publisher (Henri Paul Jonquières). The further history of the original of this portfolio after Dora Maar's death in 1997 is unknown.
Picasso, after the publication of the 1942 edition of a series of 31 engravings to Buffon's texts, brought his beloved surrealist photographer and painter Dora Maar a piece of Histoire naturelle in 1943. While in her studio, he decorated the margins of this series of prints with human heads, animals and fantastic creatures, with Dora Maar herself as the female sphinx bird on the title page. Giving her the piece, he wrote a dedication: "per Dora Maar tan rebufona!" (for Dora Maar so pretty!), which is a play on words alluding to the surname Buffon and the Catalan word for "pretty-buffon."
On the last page of the portfolio Picasso in watercolor (see photo) wrote a statement that reads:
"All the drawings in this book were made on Sunday afternoon, January 24, 1943, in Paris at 6 rue de Savoie."
Dora Maar (1907 -1997) alias Henriette Theodora Markovitch - half Croatian, half French. Daughter of an architect from Zagreb and a boutique owner from Cognac. After 16 years in Buenos Aires, she returned to her native Paris to study photography at the ENS Louis-Lumière school and painting at the famous Académie Julian. It was here in 1930 that she changed her real name to the pseudonym Dora Maar, which would henceforth be her trademark. In 1935, Dora met Pablo Picasso - her greatest love and, as it would later turn out, the greatest tragedy of her life. They met at the Les Deux Magots café. Picasso was said to have spotted Dora, 26 years younger than himself, sitting at a neighboring table. Bored, she was reportedly playing with a pocket knife, poking the blade into the tabletop between her fingers clad in a black rose-embroidered glove. One time she missed and cut her hand, with blood seeping through the material. Picasso, noticing this, approached and, captivated by this kind of masochism, asked if he could get the glove. Thus was to begin their stormy, toxic and destructive relationship, which lasted 11 years. Dora photographed Picasso on some 1,800 plates; he painted her on dozens of canvases. In contrast, she ended up in misery, madness and loneliness. For a long time she was content with her position as his chief muse. We can even see Dora Maar's face in Guernica, where she is depicted as a woman holding a lamp. The artist accompanied Picasso from the beginning of the process of creating this monumental canvas, which she meticulously recorded in photographs, creating an extremely valuable reportage for art history.
