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ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS, Sept 19: Fifty years after Picasso dumped her for a new love, Dora Maar died alone and forgotten, comforted by mementos and artworks from the artistic titan who betrayed her.
Now Maar's shrine to lost love is headed for the auction block, an unexpected treasure trove that blends the legend and legacy of one of the art world's greatest womanisers. The extraordinary cache constitutes one of the last important Picasso collections still in private hands outside his family. Only a handful of the items have been seen in public.
It includes ten major oils, seven of them portraits of Dora, as well as hundreds of drawings, photographs and sculpture, almost all of it bearing her likeness.
The oils are estimated conservatively to be worth $ 26 million. Auctioneers say they will probably bring much more, due to competition among buyers from around the world. France has a law that keeps national treasures in the country but in this case is expected to allow the vast majority of the works to leave.
``It's aslice of life,'' said Lucien Solanet, one of the auctioneers handling the three-day sale starting October 27 at the Maison de la Chimie in Paris.
From the emotional violence that emerges from `Dora weeping' to the tenderness of tiny portraits carved on pebbles and rings, the `Picassos of Dora Maar' bear witness to the artist's all-encompassing vitality during their eight-year affair. The daughter of a Yugoslav architect and a French mother, Maar died a recluse in July '97, aged 89. She left no will or apparent heirs, only an apartment filled with relics of a passion that Picasso often expressed in whimsical ways.
The collection includes tiny abstract animals sculpted from bottle caps, mini-portraits on match boxes dashed off in restaurants, a painted sculpture on raw, rotting wood and portraits crafted from red and white paper tablecloths with cigarette burns for eyes.
``Picasso worked compulsively when he was in love, and Dora kept everything,'' Solanet said. It was like her private museum.''
Dorawas 29, and an accomplished photographer with close ties to surrealism when she met Picasso in Paris in 1936.
At the time, he was struggling to divorce his first wife, Olga, and was already involved with Marie-Therese Walter, a voluptuous blond who would give birth a year later to his daughter Maya. But Maar's striking dark beauty, strong artistic temperament and fluent Spanish learned during her childhood in Argentina were irresistible.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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