An unprecedented portrait of Dora Maar painted by Pablo Picasso in 1943 and kept secret for more than 80 years by the owner family was presented this Wednesday by the drug auction house in Paris, which will put it on sale on October 24 with an estimate of 8 million euros. The work, Women’s bust with a flower hat, is part of the series Women with a hat And he had not gone to the market or exposed.
The canvas remained in the hands of the same family – which wants to remain in anonymity – since 1944, when it was acquired by the grandfather of the current heirs in full German occupation of France, shortly before the release of Paris. During generations he was hung in the family home and according to the owners, the children played in the room where they were without being aware that they lived with a picasso.
“The rediscovery of this portrait constitutes a great event for both the art market and for the history of Picasso,” said Christophe Lucien, a drug commissioner. The picture goes to the market after the auction house made an inventory for the inheritance of the owners. Lucien highlighted the exceptional nature of the piece: “It is a pull in the history of Picasso, painted on July 11, 1943, in the middle of Paris occupied (by the Nazis). It retains all its freshness, without restorations or varnish, and surprises with the intensity of its colors, which contrasts with the grim image of their work” during World War II.
Maar, a photographer, artist and couple of the painter between 1936 and 1945, appears in this work painted in the last part of his relationship, coinciding with the entry into the life of Picasso de Françoise Gilot. “The hat, a favorite attribute of Dora, becomes here a crown and a counterpoint to the fragmentation of the face, loaded with melancholy,” added the expert Agnès Sevestre-Barbé.
Picasso had only presented this canvas in a private exhibition with some of his friends, such as Jean Marais and Jean Cocteau in his workshop on the street of the Grands-Augustins of Paris, where the painter remained confined during the war. Until now, it was known only through two black and white photographs of Brassai, taken at that time, and that were used in the reasoned catalog of Christian Zervos. Now validated as authentic by the Picasso Committee and the Picasso Administration, the piece is of historical importance, according to the auction house.
“The extraordinary” is that it goes to auction without reserve price, that is, without a minimum departure price, “something very unusual in a portrait of Dora Maar,” said Lucien, who noticed the contrast with other tougher portraits of the muse: here it appears with a friendlier face, of vibrant colors.