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Lot Essay
Eyes wide open, the face of Pablo Picasso’s muse Dora Maar stares at us from her armchair. Painted on 5 March 1944, Buste de femme is one of the searing, psychological portraits of Dora that Picasso painted during the Second World War. Shown here with one of the chic hats that had become one of her attributes, Dora was a complex figure, a successful Surrealist photographer and a formidable character, with a complex psychology. Picasso has managed to condense this, and the tension that still reigned in Paris in the final months of the Occupation of France, into Buste de femme. ‘I have not painted the war because I am not the kind of painter who goes out like a photographer for something to depict,’ Picasso reflected shortly after the Occupation had ended. ‘But I have no doubt that the war is in these paintings I have done. Later on perhaps the historians will find them and show that my style has changed under the war’s influence. Myself, I do not know’ (Picasso, in Picasso and the War Years 1937-1945, ed. Steven. A. Nash, exh. cat., New York, 1998, p. 13). Picasso’s portraits of Dora such as Buste de femme are the quintessence of this phenomenon.
Dora was a part of the Surrealist circles that Picasso himself frequented during the mid-1930s. After his affair with the wholesome and sporty Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora’s intellectual stamina and emotional complexity provided a rich, vital contrast. Picasso’s subsequent partner Françoise Gilot recalled the artist’s description of one of his first indicative encounters with Dora at the famous café, the Deux Magots: ‘She was wearing black gloves with little pink flowers appliquéd on them. She took off the gloves and picked up a long, pointed knife, which she began to drive into the table between her outstretched fingers to see how close she could come to each finger without actually cutting herself. From time to time she missed by a tiny fraction of an inch and before she stopped playing with her knife, her hand was covered with blood. Pablo […] was fascinated’ (F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, Toronto and London, 1964, pp. 85-86).
Edgy, elegant and unpredictable, Dora was a perfect vehicle for the expression of Picasso’s feelings during the tumultuous years of the later 1930s and early 1940s. ‘Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman,’ Picasso told André Malraux the year after he painted Buste de femme. (Picasso to André Malraux, A. Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, New York, 1976, p. 138). In this capacity, Dora inspired Picasso to create a string of expressive masterpieces, such as the paintings entitled Femme qui pleure in Tate, London and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne amongst others. This marked a distinct change from the preceding sensuality of his depictions of Marie-Thérèse, and the elegant classicism of his wife, the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova. As is clear in Buste de femme, Dora brought a brittle sense of unease and violence to his work, fitting the period of the Spanish Civil War and then the Second World War.
Dora played a pivotal role in Picasso’s world. She enjoyed rare access to his studio, where she was able to document his creativity, not least with an almost-forensic run of photographs showing the evolution of Guernica, his vast masterpiece of 1937 fuelled by the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. However, Dora was not a mere observer. She influenced Picasso, heightening his political sensibilities, shifting his style. Indeed, looking at Buste de femme, it appears that Picasso might have deliberately presented Dora’s features, with the fragmented, refracted nose in particular, in a manner that recalls her own distorted self-portrait photomontage from circa 1936-37 held by the Cleveland Museum of Art. This suggests that Buste de femme embodies an artistic dialogue between the two creators.
By the time Picasso painted Buste de femme, the atmosphere in Paris was beginning to shift, with signs that the tide of war might be turning. Yet the realities of Occupation remained deeply felt. Just days earlier, his longtime friend, the poet Max Jacob, had been arrested—an event that would have weighed heavily on Picasso. Though he may not have known that Jacob passed away on the very day this painting was completed, the emotional gravity of the moment is subtly echoed in the work’s introspective tone and expressive brushwork.
Buste de femme conveys a sense that there might be a glimmer of hope, with the blue flecks illuminating the grisaille background like a distant dawn, a change from the muted hues of works from earlier in the War. Likewise, the vivid, contrasting red and green on her clothes and face are imbued with an intensity through black outlines reminiscent of stained-glass windows. There is also a sense of play in the way that Dora’s breasts appear to spell out part of her name across the bottom of the canvas. However, Buste de femme retains a haunting sense of oppression: Dora’s features have been twisted so that her nose recalls that of Picasso’s Afghan hound, recalling the paintings he made of her in Royan during the earliest days of the Occupation. By the time Buste de femme was painted, Picasso’s relationship with Dora Maar was nearing its end. This emotional turning point may well inform the painting’s expressive intensity, rendering it a poignant yet powerful tribute—at once tender, complex, and deeply personal. It stands as a compelling reflection of both their shared history and the turbulent times in which it was created.
Buste de Femme was acquired directly from the artist by Samuel Kootz, a pioneering New York art dealer who first introduced Picasso’s wartime works to the United States in 1946. Kootz would later become a major patron of Abstract Expressionism, supporting artists who shaped the postwar American art scene. This painting was first exhibited in April 1947 in Hollywood, California, through a collaboration between Kootz and Earl Stendahl—another influential dealer who played a key role in promoting modern masters on the West Coast of the United States. It was later shown at the Kootz Gallery New York in August 1947, further cementing its place in the transatlantic narrative of modern art.
Dora was a part of the Surrealist circles that Picasso himself frequented during the mid-1930s. After his affair with the wholesome and sporty Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora’s intellectual stamina and emotional complexity provided a rich, vital contrast. Picasso’s subsequent partner Françoise Gilot recalled the artist’s description of one of his first indicative encounters with Dora at the famous café, the Deux Magots: ‘She was wearing black gloves with little pink flowers appliquéd on them. She took off the gloves and picked up a long, pointed knife, which she began to drive into the table between her outstretched fingers to see how close she could come to each finger without actually cutting herself. From time to time she missed by a tiny fraction of an inch and before she stopped playing with her knife, her hand was covered with blood. Pablo […] was fascinated’ (F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, Toronto and London, 1964, pp. 85-86).
Edgy, elegant and unpredictable, Dora was a perfect vehicle for the expression of Picasso’s feelings during the tumultuous years of the later 1930s and early 1940s. ‘Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman,’ Picasso told André Malraux the year after he painted Buste de femme. (Picasso to André Malraux, A. Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, New York, 1976, p. 138). In this capacity, Dora inspired Picasso to create a string of expressive masterpieces, such as the paintings entitled Femme qui pleure in Tate, London and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne amongst others. This marked a distinct change from the preceding sensuality of his depictions of Marie-Thérèse, and the elegant classicism of his wife, the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova. As is clear in Buste de femme, Dora brought a brittle sense of unease and violence to his work, fitting the period of the Spanish Civil War and then the Second World War.
Dora played a pivotal role in Picasso’s world. She enjoyed rare access to his studio, where she was able to document his creativity, not least with an almost-forensic run of photographs showing the evolution of Guernica, his vast masterpiece of 1937 fuelled by the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. However, Dora was not a mere observer. She influenced Picasso, heightening his political sensibilities, shifting his style. Indeed, looking at Buste de femme, it appears that Picasso might have deliberately presented Dora’s features, with the fragmented, refracted nose in particular, in a manner that recalls her own distorted self-portrait photomontage from circa 1936-37 held by the Cleveland Museum of Art. This suggests that Buste de femme embodies an artistic dialogue between the two creators.
By the time Picasso painted Buste de femme, the atmosphere in Paris was beginning to shift, with signs that the tide of war might be turning. Yet the realities of Occupation remained deeply felt. Just days earlier, his longtime friend, the poet Max Jacob, had been arrested—an event that would have weighed heavily on Picasso. Though he may not have known that Jacob passed away on the very day this painting was completed, the emotional gravity of the moment is subtly echoed in the work’s introspective tone and expressive brushwork.
Buste de femme conveys a sense that there might be a glimmer of hope, with the blue flecks illuminating the grisaille background like a distant dawn, a change from the muted hues of works from earlier in the War. Likewise, the vivid, contrasting red and green on her clothes and face are imbued with an intensity through black outlines reminiscent of stained-glass windows. There is also a sense of play in the way that Dora’s breasts appear to spell out part of her name across the bottom of the canvas. However, Buste de femme retains a haunting sense of oppression: Dora’s features have been twisted so that her nose recalls that of Picasso’s Afghan hound, recalling the paintings he made of her in Royan during the earliest days of the Occupation. By the time Buste de femme was painted, Picasso’s relationship with Dora Maar was nearing its end. This emotional turning point may well inform the painting’s expressive intensity, rendering it a poignant yet powerful tribute—at once tender, complex, and deeply personal. It stands as a compelling reflection of both their shared history and the turbulent times in which it was created.
Buste de Femme was acquired directly from the artist by Samuel Kootz, a pioneering New York art dealer who first introduced Picasso’s wartime works to the United States in 1946. Kootz would later become a major patron of Abstract Expressionism, supporting artists who shaped the postwar American art scene. This painting was first exhibited in April 1947 in Hollywood, California, through a collaboration between Kootz and Earl Stendahl—another influential dealer who played a key role in promoting modern masters on the West Coast of the United States. It was later shown at the Kootz Gallery New York in August 1947, further cementing its place in the transatlantic narrative of modern art.