Dora as Picasso saw her.
Dora Maar – Picasso’s muse.
One of Pablo Picasso’s best-known portraits has been sold at auction in New York for US$45m (£35m).
Femme Assise, Robe Bleu (Seated Woman in Blue Dress) features one of his many lovers, Dora Maar.
During World War Two, the Nazis seized the painting but were intercepted on their way from Paris to Moravia by French Resistance fighters.
In 2015, Picasso’s Women of Algiers sold for $179m at Christie’s – a record for any picture sold at auction.
Seated Woman went to a US collector and six years ago it was sold for $26m. So it is close to doubling in value in six years. 15% or so per annum. Not bad!
Dora Maar and Picasso had an intense relationship for nine years. He painted Seated Woman in 1939, when he was 58 and she was 31.
It is one of the great Picasso portraits of his middle years, inspired – as so often, according to BBC Arts correspondent, Vincent Dowd – by love and by powerful sexual desire.
Or, alternatively, he was taking the piss. What do you think, Dear Reader?
Well, This Is What I Think 
I think you may be unsurprised Yolly when I say that some modern art (well, a fair bit of it) appears to have a typo – they missed the ‘f’ from the front of the word. I really don’t care if it is worth zillions, it is AWFUL. I had never seen that picture before – there were a lot of drugs about in those days in bohemian circles weren’t there – could that be the explanation?
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*chuckles* Who knows, Pat, who knows? One too many absinthe, perhaps?
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The photo is actually of Nusch Eluard photographed by Dora Maar who was an incredible surrealist photographer. One of Maar’s famous quotes of Picasso’s portraits of her is “All [Picasso’s] portraits of me are lies. They’re all Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar.” ~ I think it is one of the best summaries I’ve ever read of his work..
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