New Picasso portrait of his best-known muse unveiled at Paris auction house
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Called Bust Of A Woman With A Flowery Hat, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s painting depicts French photographer Dora Maar who was his best-known muse.
PHOTO: EPA
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PARIS – A previously unknown portrait by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso of one of his lovers was revealed on Sept 18 after being put up for sale at auction in Paris with a reserve price of €8 million (S$12.1 million).
Called Bust Of A Woman With A Flowery Hat, it depicts Ms Dora Maar, a French photographer, painter and poet who was his best-known muse.
Painted with oil, the colourful work measuring 80cm by 60cm “is valued at around €8 million, a reserve price that could soar”, according to auctioneer Christophe Lucien at Parisian auction house Drouot.
It was painted by the artist on July 11, 1943, and acquired in August 1944 by a French collector who is the grandfather of the current owners.
Picasso specialist Agnes Sevestre-Barbe was present during the unveiling of the work. She said it was “unknown to the public and never exhibited, except in the Spanish master’s studio in Paris”.
She added that it was “quite exceptional and marks a milestone in the history of art and in that of Picasso”.
It shows Ms Maar with a melancholy but harmonious face, wearing a colourful flowery hat, at a moment when the macho Spanish painter was abandoning her for a younger artist, Ms Francoise Gilot.
Ms Maar was his most important model and muse, with some 60 works based around her.
The Weeping Woman series of portraits depict her and they collaborated on his masterpiece Guernica, with Ms Maar photographing the black and white anti-war work and the artist using her images to develop the canvas.
Other famed cubist renderings of her include Portrait Of Dora Maar and Bust Of A Woman.
Their tumultuous nine-year affair, conducted almost entirely in Spanish, began in 1936 and is credited by some with helping him rekindle his creative spark.
Their messy break up saw Ms Maar plunge into depression.
The sellers are divesting the painting as part of an inheritance settlement, Mr Lucien said.
Picasso sales are used as a leading indicator for the art market as a whole, which has slumped in recent years.
Sales totaled US$223 million (S$285 million) in 2024, around a third of the US$597 million spent on the Spanish master in 2023, auction data from consultancy Artprice showed in March.
His Homme Assis, a painting of a seated musketeer from 1969, sold for US$15.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York on May 13.
The record sale for one of his works was The Women Of Algiers (Version O), a 1955 oil painting which sold for US$179.4 million at Christie’s in New York in 2015.
A major show at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Britain’s Tate Modern gallery in 2019 sought to spotlight Ms Maar’s own creative talent and drag her out from his considerable shadow. AFP
