Dora Maar in an Armchair by Pablo Picasso - 1939 - 73.3 x 60.3 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Dora Maar in an Armchair by Pablo Picasso - 1939 - 73.3 x 60.3 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dora Maar in an Armchair

oil on canvas • 73.3 x 60.3 cm
  • Pablo Picasso - October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973 Pablo Picasso 1939
Picasso painted this portrait of his new lover, the Surrealist photographer Dora Maar (Henriette Theodora Markovitch, 1907-1997), during their yearlong sojourn at Royan, a small town on France's southern Atlantic coast. As with many of Picasso's depictions of Dora, she confronts the viewer with wide-eyed and high-strung intelligence. Her sparkling eyes compete with the stars on the garish wallpaper behind her, presumably the same paper that decorated their rooms at the Hôtel du Tigre.