Dora Maar


Fabulous exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and work of Dora Maar.

The show looked at how Maar’s work spanned mediums and techniques throughout most of the 20th century. I loved that it opened with a room of pictures of her including self-portraits. It was a nice touch to include eight sets of passport photographs showing her age over the years and the wonderful surrealist photograph of her hands by Emmanuel Sougez.

I had known very little about her, other than the obvious that she had a relationship with Picasso, but I liked the fact that he didn’t get a mention until Room 6. I hadn’t realised what an established photographer/artist she was when they met. I was fascinated by the room on her early work as a photographer including ground breaking fashion shoots. Also having recently done a course on art and photography I was interested to see her street photography work from Spain, London and Paris and how this work led her into Surrealist images.

Once we did hit Picasso the show emphasized how they influenced each other rather than just looking at her as a muse. She taught him the cliché verre technique of photo collage and he encouraged her to return to painting. It also looked at how she recorded the painting of Guernica and speculated whether he painted it in black and white due to the influence of her photography.

After the Second World War she turned to brightly coloured, abstracted landscapes which I loved and experimented with cameraless photography using household objects and photo-sensitive paper. I hadn’t realised she didn’t die until 1997 and there were great quotes from her right up till then.

Closes 15 March 2020

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