Amar Gallery is proud to announce its reopening exhibition - Dora  Maar: Behind the Lens, featuring photographs & photograms from the  Dora Maar Estate. The exhibition is a celebration of Maar’s life and  is in conjunction with the upcoming release of bestselling author  Louisa Treger’s book, The Paris Muse, based on Maar’s affair with  Picasso, and the theatrical production Maar, Dora which is performing at Camden Fringe in August and is produced by Amar Gallery, Nadia Jackson & Spiky Saul. 

Louisa Treger states “Dora Maar is mostly known for being  Picasso’s Weeping Woman as though tears are the only interesting thing about her. Amar Gallery and my novel put her at the heart of the  story and give her the recognition she deserves.”

 

Dora Maar: Behind the Lens presents surrealist works of Maar as well as photographs of Picasso and Guernica, the celebrated anti-war painting for which Maar was the only official photographer. The exhibition also  revisits Maar’s erasure throughout art history. As a photographer  she was a pioneer, admired by the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson  and Man Ray. Her position as Picasso’s lover obscured her artistic  talent, which extended far beyond photography, and included  poetry and painting. 

Arriving in Paris at the age of 19, Maar studied at the progressive  Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Academy Julian and Ecole de Photographie.  Here she refined her distinctive black and white photographic style.  She soon established herself as a prominent photographer  associated with surrealism, exhibiting at the 1936 International  Surrealist Exhibition in London, alongside Salvador Dali, Man Ray,  Eileen Agar and Paul Eluard.

As Time Magazine wrote in 2022 Maar’s anti-fascist worldview  influenced Picasso’s art: "Like many surrealist artists, philosophers  and poets during the 1930s, Maar had converted to left-wing  politics. In fact, she became one of the Left’s most involved  activists—a radical move for a woman at a time when women were  still largely excluded from politics in France; they only gained the  right to vote in 1944.” Part of the proceeds from Dora Maar: Behind  the Lens will go towards supporting Shakti Vahini & We Power, two  notable anti- trafficking organisations in India which serve for the  protection of women & children in India.