Madrid,
Born as Henriette Théodora Markovitch, in November 1907, Dora Maar grew between Argentina and Paris and studied decorative arts and painting before deciding to make the camera its main means of expression and light clearly surreal daring photomontages.
It would be added, thus, to a generation of women artists who took advantage of the new professional opportunities that gave them the rise of advertising and the enlightened press; That was the beginning of his six decades of career, which he held among those more or less commercial orders, documentary images of a social nature and paintings. The latter offer many keys on their interests and continue to be little known, in general, for the general public.
It was in 1931, before fulfilling the thirties, when Maar decided to launch a study specialized in portraits, fashion and advertising photography with the stage Pierre Kéfer, but not even its early production and executed according to the criteria of its customers, it fell into conventions: in its ads he introduced the collage, the aforementioned photomontages and the very elaborate scenographies, and also devised surprising studies of nudes.
In those same years, Dora actively participated in left -wing revolutionary groups led by artists and intellectuals: it was a stage of prewar and economic depression also in Europe, and their street images of that time, taken in Paris, Barcelona and London, captured miseries. Her social concerns shared them with many surrealists and she would become one of the scarce photographers included in the exhibitions and publications developed by this current.
Those compositions ran couples at the beginning of their relationship with Picasso: they met in the winter of 1935 and their unionwhich lasted about eight years, it would have a deep effect on the trajectories of both. She documented the process of creation of Guernica, in 1937, and was immortalized in countless occasions by Malaga, in most as an emblem of pain. But its mutual creative food went further: the alimon carried out a series of portraits in which they combined experimental techniques of photography and engraving and that would anticipate the energetic return of Maar to the painting -which the Malaga led to, although she felt more comfortable with the camera.
After World War II, the artist divided her time between Paris and the south of France, delving into diverse issues and styles before focusing on the realization of gestural and abstract paintings in which the landscapes that surrounded her were the starting point. Although these works were exposed in Paris and London and were acclaimed in the fifties, Maar would gradually retire from artistic circles and the second half of his life would be involved in mystery and speculation. However, he kept creating.
In which it is the fourteenth collaboration of the Loewe Foundation with Photospaña, a selection of works by this French author, between photographs, drawings and one of those pictorial landscapes of the fifties, can be contemplated in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, under the commission of María Millán.
The route of this sample, raised from the purpose of claiming its figure as a valuable and autonomous creator, opens with the expanded copy of a portrait that Brassaï made of it in its study in 1944, surrounded by its own works; He shared friendship with him, also with Cartier-Bresson. Another of his portraits at the start of the exhibition was carried out by Picasso; As for his personal work in this genre we will see images of Frida Kahlo or Jacqueline Lamba, a painter in addition to André Breton’s partner. The surreal pope said to find in the production of Maar the values of the convulsive beauty. Fotocollages will also go to our path or their reflection of a model for Alberto Sánchez’s sculpture The Spanish people have a path that leads to a star.
But the center of this exhibition is the photographs that he took in Barcelona in 1933: he was fixed above all in humble workers and people in the exercise of his daily work, from a perspective linked to social justice, which he handled without feeling committed to getting involved in any political party.
Following his youth time in Buenos Aires, Maar spoke without Spanish difficulty, so his immersion in the less favored environments of the Catalan capital during the Republic and its proximity to children, blind, beggars, musicians or prostitutes do not respond to a tourist curiosity, but to the genuine concern of those who closely felt their experiences. It is inevitable to link their images of blind people with the multiple works of surreal authors in which this condition acquires the role of metaphor.
We will contemplate below some of the photographs in which he documented the process of creation of Guernica; It was said that she herself motivated Picasso’s decision to work in this matter, by teaching her images of the Basque town after the bombing. She photographed her work on the commission of Christian Zervos, then director of Cahiers d’Arts; No one else could do it at that time.
As for their drawings gathered, especially types of supports, differently diverse have been selected: some made by raised hand and quickly, others more meticulous and, in many cases, cubist inquiries in which he accounted for his dreams and anguish or female portraits.
His only painting in the Galdiano Lázaro, present to account for that facet of his career, dates back to 1957 and corresponds to a mountainous landscape in southern France. Its aesthetics is completely different from that of the rest of the compositions of the sample and cubism: it seems to start turning towards abstraction.
This presentation, small but partly unpublished in our country, can serve as a starting point for those who want to enter both in their photograph and in their most dream and experimental creations. It will be accompanied by a Conference from Victoria Combalaía, on June 17 at 7:00 p.m.
“Dora Maar. Photography and drawings”
Lázaro Galdiano Museum
C/ Serrano, 122
Madrid
From June 6 to September 14, 2025
