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Pablo Picasso’s Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat Dora Maar, unseen for 80 years, was unveiled in Paris and will be auctioned by Lucien Paris, estimated at €8million.
The painting, Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar), shows Maar in a softer, colourful light than Picasso’s previous portraits of his then lover.
A painting by Pablo Picasso of the French photographer and painter Dora Maar, which was completed during the German occupation of Paris but not seen in the past 80 years, was finally unveiled on Thursday.
The painting, Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar), shows Maar in a softer, colourful light than Picasso’s previous portraits of his then lover.
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According to The Guardian, Picasso made many paintings of Maar, including the famous, Portrait of Dora Maar and Dora Maar au Chat, but she said of them: “All of his portraits of me are lies. They’re all Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar.”
The couple met towards the end of 1935 when she was taking photographs to promote Jean Renoir’s film The Crime of Monsieur Lange. At the time, he was reportedly in a relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter and had a daughter Maya.
He frequently represented Maar, whose masochistic tendencies fascinated him, as a tortured figure often in tears as in La Femme qui pleure (Weeping Woman), which experts say he intended to represent the suffering of the Spanish civil war but was also indicative of his alleged abuse of Maar and the couple’s many physical fights, The Guardian reported.
In the latest discovered work, Maar’s face appears to be anguished and on the point of weeping.
The portrait was completed in July 1943 and was displayed a handful of times outside his Paris atelier in the Rue des Grands Augustins. It has been in a private collection since it was bought in August 1944 a few months before the liberation of Paris.
According to The Guardian, the portrait’s existence was known from a black and white photograph taken shortly before it was sold that featured in an art catalogue.
Meanwhile, the seller, who had inherited the painting from a grandparent, an unnamed French collector, has asked to remain anonymous.
The auction house Lucien Paris has estimated the oil painting measuring 80cm x 60cm at about €8 million. The portrait will be sold on October 24 and will be on display for three days before the sale.
Paris, France
September 18, 2025, 19:01 IST
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