Dora Maar au Chat: Difference between revisions
Fieryninja (talk | contribs) →Description: removed copyvio, expanded with new text |
Fieryninja (talk | contribs) →Description: expanded |
||
| Line 29: | Line 29: | ||
''Dora Maar au Chat'' is one of the largest portraits of the subject by Picasso. It is an oil on canvas painting measuring 128.3 cm x 95.3 cm. As Picasso's mistress and main model, Dora Maar was the artist's main source of inspiration and his artistic companion. The painting was created in 1941 during the midst of their tempestuous relationship. |
''Dora Maar au Chat'' is one of the largest portraits of the subject by Picasso. It is an oil on canvas painting measuring 128.3 cm x 95.3 cm. As Picasso's mistress and main model, Dora Maar was the artist's main source of inspiration and his artistic companion. The painting was created in 1941 during the midst of their tempestuous relationship. |
||
David Norman, a Chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department Worldwide, |
In this painting, Picasso aims to depict not only Dora's beauty, but also her temperament. He once described her as an "Afghan cat" in reference to her personality. The presence of the cat in the background of the painting offers special significance, as it reflects the traditional pairing of cats and women in art that was used to suggest sexual aggression. |
||
David Norman, a Chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department Worldwide, summarised the importance of the composition.<ref name="Sothebys" /><blockquote>Dora Maar Au Chat presents the artist’s most mysterious and challenging mistress regally posed three-quarter length in a large wooden chair with a small black cat perched behind her in both an amusing and menacing attitude. The faceted planes of her body and richly layered surface of brushstrokes impart a monumental and sculptural quality to this dazzling portrait. The painting is also remarkable for its brilliance of color and the complex and dense patterning of the model’s dress. The powerful figure is set in a dramatic, yet simple setting composed of a vertiginously inclined plane of wooden floorboards and shallow interior space that is arranged in a manner reminiscent of Picasso’s earliest manipulations of space in a Cubist manner.</blockquote> |
|||
== Significance and legacy == |
== Significance and legacy == |
||
Revision as of 12:04, 4 December 2020
| Dora Maar au Chat | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Pablo Picasso |
| Year | 1941 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Movement | Cubism |
| Dimensions | 128.3 cm × 95.3 cm (50.5 in × 37.5 in) |
| Location | Private collection |
Dora Maar au Chat (English: Dora Maar with Cat) is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1941 and depicts Dora Maar, (original name Henriette Theodora Markovitch) the artist's lover, seated on a chair with a small cat perched on her shoulders. The painting is listed as one of the most expensive paintings, after achieving a price of $95 million at Sotheby's on 3 May 2006. It is currently the sixth highest selling painting by Picasso.
Background
The canvas was one of many portraits of Dora Maar painted by Pablo Picasso over their nearly decade-long relationship. Picasso fell in love at the age of 55 with the 29-year-old Maar and the couple soon began living together. This painting was made during the year 1941, when the Nazis were occupying France.
Description
 |
Dora Maar au Chat is one of the largest portraits of the subject by Picasso. It is an oil on canvas painting measuring 128.3 cm x 95.3 cm. As Picasso's mistress and main model, Dora Maar was the artist's main source of inspiration and his artistic companion. The painting was created in 1941 during the midst of their tempestuous relationship.
In this painting, Picasso aims to depict not only Dora's beauty, but also her temperament. He once described her as an "Afghan cat" in reference to her personality. The presence of the cat in the background of the painting offers special significance, as it reflects the traditional pairing of cats and women in art that was used to suggest sexual aggression.
David Norman, a Chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Department Worldwide, summarised the importance of the composition.[1]
Dora Maar Au Chat presents the artist’s most mysterious and challenging mistress regally posed three-quarter length in a large wooden chair with a small black cat perched behind her in both an amusing and menacing attitude. The faceted planes of her body and richly layered surface of brushstrokes impart a monumental and sculptural quality to this dazzling portrait. The painting is also remarkable for its brilliance of color and the complex and dense patterning of the model’s dress. The powerful figure is set in a dramatic, yet simple setting composed of a vertiginously inclined plane of wooden floorboards and shallow interior space that is arranged in a manner reminiscent of Picasso’s earliest manipulations of space in a Cubist manner.
Significance and legacy
Charles Moffett, Vice Chairman of Sotheby’s, remarked on the painting's significance.[1]
Dora Maar with Cat is unquestionably one of Picasso's most extraordinary portrayals of the woman who for nearly a decade was his muse, model, and lover. An accomplished photographer who was close to key members of the Surrealist circle, Maar appealed deeply to Picasso because of her arresting and wild beauty, engaging intellect, and commitment as an artist. As Brigitte Léal has observed with regard to the portraits of Dora Maar that Picasso painted in the early 1940s, ‘...they embody the height of modern beauty as [André] Breton envisioned it, based on the principle of vital disorder, which the figure of Dora Maar, in her extreme mutability, her real, spiritual restlessness, will forever incarnate’.
Provenance
In the 1940s, the painting was obtained by Chicago collectors Leigh and Mary Block. They sold the painting in 1963. After that, the painting was never seen in public until the 21st century.
During 2005 and 2006, Dora Maar au Chat, then owned by the Gidwitz family of Chicago, was shown worldwide as part of Sotheby's exhibitions in London, Hong Kong and New York. It came up for sale in an auction held at Sotheby's on 3 May 2006 in New York, making it the second-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction at the time. An anonymous Russian bidder who was present at the auction won the work with a final bid of $95,216,000, well exceeding the pre-auction estimate of $50 million.[2][3] The identity of the bidder, who also purchased an 1883 Monet seascape and a 1978 Chagall, was a topic of much speculation. The winning buyer is listed as Georgian businessman and billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.[4]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Pablo Picasso Portrait of Dora Maar Could Bring $50 Million at May 3 Sotheby's Auction". News Antique. December 17, 2006. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Mystery Bidder Spends $95 Million on a Picasso", Carol Vogel, New York Times, May 4, 2006.
- ^ "Pablo Picasso Portrait of Dora Maar brings $95,216,000 at Sotheby's" Archived March 1, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, News-Antique.com, May 4, 2006.
- ^ "Bidzina Ivanishvili – a billionaire goes into politics". OBC Transeuropa. November 8, 2011. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)