Dora Maar: Photographer
Curated by Annabella Johnson and Marcello Marvelli
Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, New York
April 25 - June 28, 2004
The exhibition Dora Maar: Photographer presents a concise and balanced selection of approximately sixty Dora Maar photographs, chosen to illustrate the different moments of her career as a photographer. This is the first retrospective of her photographs in the United States.
Dora Maar’s output as a professional photographer lasted less than ten years from the late twenties to 1937, and during that period she produced many accomplished, varied and important pictures. These range from cityscapes to fashion photography for magazines, from iconic surrealist images to inspired portraits, and from experimental prints (collage and photomontage) to architectural studies. For a long time, Dora Maar was acknowledged in art history solely as the muse, model and companion of Pablo Picasso from 1935 to 1943. Dora Maar’s own fascinating, visionary and often radical work as a photographer has only recently started to be investigated through exhibitions and catalogs, primarily in Europe. Through these exhibitions she has emerged as one of the most interesting artists in the history of French photography of the Thirties.
The exhibition highlights the beginning of her professional career in the early thirties when she opened a photographic studio in Paris. These years were particularly rich artistically and socially in Paris: Man Ray was active alongside Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, and Kertesz, and the surrealist movement was gaining momentum against a backdrop of wider European political unrest. Journeys to Spain and London provided Dora Maar with opportunities to explore her fascination for street life, and develop both her sympathetic eye for marginalized people and her instinct for the unusual and uncanny. The surrealist years, 1935-36, represent the culmination of Dora Maar’s photographic achievements. Among the surrealists, Dora Maar had close relationships with Paul and Nusch Eluard, André Breton and his wife Jacqueline Lamba, Man Ray, Georges Hugnet, Meret Oppenheim, Yves Tanguy and Michel Leiris.
The exhibition takes place at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs in New York, a not-for-profit exhibition space that organizes high profile, independently curated exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. An illustrated, color brochure accompanies the exhibition.
DORSKY GALLERY Curatorial Programs
11-03 45th Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101
MARVELLI GALLERY
526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.marvelligallery.com
