Dora Maar 1909-1997

Another print of this image:

Mary Ann Caws, Picasso's Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar (Boston, 2000), p. 30 (reversed)

This innovative image, produced for Pétrole Hahn hair oil in the mid-1930s by the Kéfer-Dora Maar studio, is a perfect example of Dora Maar’s application of Surrealist ideas and imagery to the commercial world of advertising.  Pétrole Hahn, a French manufacturer of hair care products, was on the cutting edge of advertising and constantly absorbed the latest artistic trends in their extensive marketing campaigns.  In addition to Maar, the firm also commissioned work from the Bauhaus-trained photographers ringl + pit (Grete Stern and Ellen Auerbach), who produced one of their best-known images for Pétrole Hahn (Sobieszek, The Art of Persuasion, p. 54). 

As of this writing, only one other vintage print of this image has been located, in a private collection in Belgium.  In the series of three auctions of Maar’s estate in 1998 and 1999, the single photograph offered of this image was a later print made in 1980 (‘Les Photographies de Dora Maar: Une Derniere Rencontre,’ PIASA, Paris, 19 November 1999, Lot 48).  It is possible that this print, on a large mount, was intended for exhibition.

Dora Maar (born Henriette Theodora Markovitch) first began photographing in the late 1920s, at the age of 19.  She studied both photography and painting at Union Central des Arts Décoratifs, the Ecole de Photographie, and the Académie Julian in Paris, before setting up a photographic studio with Pierre Kéfer in 1931.  At this time, she met the photographer Emmanuel Sougez, who served as her mentor; she also became a close friend of Brassaï, with whom she shared a darkroom for a short time.  As Maar evolved as a photographer, she became increasingly involved in the artistic life of Paris which was, at the time, dominated by the Surrealists.  She became a vital participant in the inner circle of Surrealists that included André Breton, Paul Eluard, Man Ray (for whom she served as a model), and Georges Bataille.  In the 1930s, Maar created a number of memorable surreal images, including 29 Rue d-Astorg (Caws, Picasso’s Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar, pp. 72 and 73), and Père Ubu (ibid., p. 78), a print of which was offered in these rooms on 14 February 2006 (Important Photographs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Including Works from the Gilman Paper Company Collection, Sale 8165, Lot 29).  Maar is perhaps best known as Pablo Picasso’s lover, and as the model for many of his most significant works from the 1930s and early 1940s.