Dora Maar

Henriette Theodora Markovitch alias Dora Maar was a French photographer and painter, best known for being a lover and muse of Pablo Picasso. Her father was Croatian, her mother was born in Tourraine, France, and Dora grew up in Argentina.She was famous as a photographer, and also a painter herself, before she met Picasso. She made herself better known in the world with her photographs of the successive stages of the completion of Guernica that Picasso painted in his workshop on the rue des Grands Augustins, and other photos of Picasso. Together she and Picasso studied printing with Man Ray.

Picasso met her in January 1936 (when she was 29 years old), at the terrace of the Café Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris. The famous poet Paul Eluard, who accompanied him, had to introduce him to this beautiful, sad woman. He was attracted by her beauty and self-mutilation (cutting her fingers and the table - he got her bloody gloves and exhibited them on a shelf in his apartment). She spoke Spanish fluently, so Picasso was even more fascinated. Their relationship lasted nearly nine years. She died in Paris in 1997.