Dora Maar: Behind the Lens
6th June, 2024– 18th August, 2024
Amar Gallery
12-14 Kirkman House
Lower Ground
Whitfield Street
London
W1T 2RF
Amar Gallery Fitzrovia will launch as an activist art gallery championing overlooked female, minority, and LGBT+ artists. The opening launch exhibition Dora Maar: Behind the Lens will showcase exclusive photographs and photograms from the Dora Maar Estate which will be open to the public 16th June – 18th August 2024. The private preview opening on the 15th of June 2024 is being hosted by British Indian LGBT+ ally and women’s rights activist Amar Singh and renowned British author Louisa Treger.
The exhibition is a celebration of Maar’s life and is in conjunction with the upcoming 4th July 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.
Dora MAAR 1907 – 1997 Compositions abstraites (Vierge et crucifix), c. 1980
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.
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 ac7vists—a radical move for a woman at a time when women were still largely excluded from poli7cs 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.
DORA MAAR SELECTED COLLECTIONS & MUSEUMS
MoMa, NYC
Getty
Tate, London
Metropolitan Museum, NYC
Centre Pompidou
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
National Gallery of Art, United States
Morgan Museum & Library
Cleveland Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Madrid
Harvard Art Museums
The William Talbok Hillman Collection
Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
Princeton University Art Museum
Mougins Museum, France
Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Detroit Institute of Arts
Maison Dora Maar, France
Dora Maar: Behind the Lens opens on the 6th of June, 2024 until the 18th of August, 2024 at Amar Gallery
©2024 Amar Gallery
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