Dora Maar

French photographer, painter and poet Dora Maar (b. Henriette Theodora Markovitch, 1907-97), was a remarkable artist who straddled both the artistic and commercial realms. Until recently Maar's work has often been overlooked in favour of her role as model to many greats of the early twentieth century, including Man Ray and Picasso, to whom she acted as model and archivist to for over 10 years. Yet Maar had been making a name for herself on the avant-garde scene long before she met these men. Born to a French mother and a Croatian father in Paris in 1907, Maar grew up in Argentina. Aged 19 she returned to Paris and enrolled at the Academie Julian which would catapult her towards stardom. Here she began to study art seriously, at Andre Lhote's atelier, alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as at the Ecole de Photographie de la Ville de Paris and the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs. Her celebrated image Pere Ubu - titled after the absurd dictatorial antihero of Jarry's Ubu Roi (1896) - would become the emblem for the surrealist movement after it was exhibited in London at the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936. And today Maar's imaginative evocation of the pear-shaped, breast-plated Ubu in the monstrous reality of a baby armadillo remains one of the most compelling and repellent of surrealist photographs. Texts to include: `Fashion and advertising' by Amanda Maddox; `Nude and Eroticism' by Alix Agret; `Social Engagement' by Florian Ebner; `Barcelona' by Victoria Combalia; `Social and Political Engagement' by Patrice Allain; `Found Surrealism' by Dawn Ades; `Photo Collages' by Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska; `Surrealist Exhibitions and the "Ubu" Portrait' by Ian Walker; `Women of Surrealism: Maar's constellation' by Abigail Solomon-Godeau; Maar's Portraits by Picasso' by Emma Lewis; `Late Work' by Damarice Amao; and `Late Negatives' by Anne Cartier-Bresson.