PARIS, Sept 19 \u2014 A previously unknown portrait by Pablo Picasso of one of his lovers was revealed today after being put up for sale at auction in Paris with a reserve price of eight million euros (US$9.5 million).<\/p>\n
Entitled \u201cBust of a woman with a flowery hat\u201d, it depicts Dora Maar, a French photographer, painter and poet who was Picasso\u2019s best-known muse.<\/p>\n
Painted with oil, the colourful work measuring 80 x 60 centimetres \u201cis valued at around eight million euros (RM39.6 million), a reserve price that could soar,\u201d according to auctioneer Christophe Lucien at Parisian auction house Drouot.<\/p>\n
It was painted by Picasso on July 11, 1943, and acquired in August 1944 by a French collector who is the grandfather of the current owners.<\/p>\n
Agnes Sevestre-Barbe, a Picasso specialist present during the unveiling of the work, said it was \u201cunknown to the public and never exhibited, except in the Spanish master\u2019s studio in Paris\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added that it was \u201cquite exceptional and marks a milestone in the history of art and in that of Picasso.\u201d<\/p>\n
It shows Maar with a melancholy but harmonious face, wearing a colourful flowery hat, at a moment when the Spanish painter was abandoning her for a younger artist, Francoise Gilot.<\/p>\n
Maar was Picasso\u2019s most important model and muse, with some 60 works based around her.<\/p>\n
His \u201cThe Weeping Woman\u201d portraits depict her, and they collaborated on his masterpiece \u201cGuernica\u201d, with Maar photographing the black-and-white anti-war work and Picasso using her images to develop the canvas.<\/p>\n
Other famed cubist renderings of her include \u201cPortrait of Dora Maar\u201d and \u201cBust of a Woman\u201d.<\/p>\n
Their tumultuous nine-year affair, conducted almost entirely in Spanish, began in 1936 and is credited by some with helping Picasso rekindle his creative spark.<\/p>\n
Their messy break-up saw Maar plunge into depression.<\/p>\n
The sellers are divesting the painting as part of an inheritance settlement, Lucien said.<\/p>\n
Pablo Picasso sales are used as a leading indicator for the art market as a whole, which has slumped in recent years.<\/p>\n
Sales totalled US$223 million in 2024, around a third of the US$597 million spent on the Spanish master the previous year, auction data from consultancy Artprice showed in March.<\/p>\n
Picasso\u2019s \u201cHomme assis\u201d, a painting of a seated musketeer from 1969, sold for US$15.1 million at Sotheby\u2019s in New York on May 13.<\/p>\n
The record sale for one of his works was \u201cThe Women of Algiers (Version O)\u201d, a 1955 oil painting which sold for US$179.4 million (RM752.8 million) at Christie\u2019s in New York in 2015.<\/p>\n
A major show at the Pompidou Centre and Tate Modern gallery in 2019 sought to spotlight Maar\u2019s own creative talent and drag her out from Picasso\u2019s considerable shadow. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS, Sept 19 \u2014 A previously unknown portrait by Pablo Picasso of one of his lovers was revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,114,308,93,61,60,25210,25207,25209,25206,25204,6626,25205,25211,25208],"class_list":["post-31401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-china","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-japan-prime-minister","tag-japans-first-woman-prime-minister","tag-ldp-leadership-election","tag-liberal-democratic-party-leadership-election","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-shigeru-ishiba","tag-shinjiro-koizumi","tag-yasukuni-shrine","tag-yasukuni-shrine-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}