1936-1938: two faces, one war

One room, two women, the same year

In 1936, Picasso is still officially married to Olga Khokhlova, from whom he lives apart, and has been in a relationship since 1927 with Marie-Thérèse Walter, with whom he has a daughter, Maya, born on 5 September 1935. It is against this already complicated backdrop that Picasso meets Dora Maar, in late 1935 or during 1936: the two relationships overlap for several years, something the dates in Room 14 make concretely visible — a portrait of Marie-Thérèse dated 6 January 1937, portraits of Dora Maar dated October of that same year.

A recognised photographer in Surrealist circles before meeting Picasso, Dora Maar is not merely a model: as a professional photographer she documents several months of Picasso's work in 1937, the best-known episode concerning a painting that is not in this room, but whose genesis is directly reflected in it.

1. The meeting, between legend and established fact

The most often repeated account of the meeting between Picasso and Dora Maar takes place at the Café Les Deux Magots, where the poet Paul Éluard introduces them to one another. Dora Maar, this version goes, was wearing black gloves embroidered with small pink flowers; she takes them off, places her hand on the table, and slowly drives a knife between her splayed fingers, sometimes cutting herself until she bleeds. Picasso, fascinated, is said to have kept the gloves and displayed them in a case at home.

This scene, which has become one of the most widely reproduced founding stories of their relationship, comes from memories recounted after the fact — notably those of Françoise Gilot, a later companion of Picasso's, who had it from Picasso himself — rather than from a direct account dated to 1936. It is repeated today by most biographers without being a first-hand source verifiable in every detail; it is more accurate to present it as the story Picasso liked to tell of their meeting than as an established fact down to the last particular.

2. Two women, two ways of painting

Portrait of Marie-Thérèse (6 January 1937) and Portrait of Dora Maar (1 October 1937) were painted the same year, nine months apart. Art historians have long noted a stylistic contrast between the two women in Picasso's work of this period: portraits of Marie-Thérèse favour soft curves and pastel colours, while those of Dora Maar adopt brighter colours and sharper angles. This contrast is not absolute or systematic from one painting to the next, but it is recognised widely enough among specialists to be worth pointing out to visitors in front of the two canvases in the room.

The Hairdressing, painted on 22 March 1938, shows a woman doing her hair in front of a mirror — a motif Picasso returns to several times during this period, somewhere between an intimate scene and an exercise in constructing a face seen from several angles at once, a device inherited directly from the Analytic Cubism of 1911-1914.

3. In the background, the war in Spain

The Spanish Civil War breaks out in July 1936. On 26 April 1937, a market day, German and Italian aircraft bomb the Basque town of Guernica, killing a number of civilians still debated today. Picasso, who had been working on an entirely different canvas, learns of the bombing from press photographs and immediately begins the painting that would become Guernica, a canvas more than seven metres wide.

Between 11 May and 4 June 1937, Dora Maar photographs, in Picasso's studio on Rue des Grands-Augustins, the various stages of the composition — twenty-eight photographs that make up the first known photographic report on the creation of a major work of art, and which today allow historians to reconstruct precisely how the painting evolved. This activity of Dora Maar's, carried out alongside the sittings for her own portrait, casts the two faces of Room 14 in a different light: not merely portraits of companions, but the traces of two very active presences in Picasso's studio at the most politically charged moment of his career.

How much time

Allow about fifteen minutes for this room, stopping to compare directly the two 1937 portraits.

Portraits of Marie-Thérèse (January 1937) — 4 minutes.
Portraits of Dora Maar (October 1937) — 5 minutes.
The Hairdressing (March 1938) — 3 minutes.
Head and The Straw Hat with Blue Foliage (May 1936) — 3 minutes.

Sources and verification

Facts checked against the Musée Picasso Paris and cross-checked sources (Wikipedia FR/EN, TheCollector, Time) for meeting and birth dates and the historical context of 1936-1938.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the Musée Picasso website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.