Picasso painting hidden for 80 years expected to fetch 8m+ at auction

"The work, Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar), was finished towards the end of the couple's turbulent nine-year relationship and shows Maar in a softer, more colourful light than Picasso's previous portraits of his then lover. Picasso made many paintings of Maar, including the famous, Portrait of Dora Maar and Dora Maar au Chat, but she said of them: All of his portraits of me are lies. They're all Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar."

"He frequently represented Maar, whose masochistic tendencies fascinated him, as a tortured figure often in tears as in La Femme qui pleure (Weeping Woman), which experts say he intended to represent the suffering of the Spanish civil war but was also indicative of his alleged abuse of Maar and the couple's many physical fights. In the rediscovered work, Maar's face, fragmented but painted in bright colour without perspective, appears anguished and on the point of weeping."

"At the time Maar had learned that Picasso, then 61, intended to leave her for the artist Francoise Gilot, 21. The portrait was completed in July 1943 and was only displayed a handful of times outside his Paris atelier in the Rue des Grands Augustins. It has been in a private collection since it was bought in August 1944 a few months before the liberation of Paris."

A previously unseen 1943 portrait by Pablo Picasso, Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar), has been unveiled after 80 years in private hands. The painting was completed during the German occupation of Paris toward the end of Picasso and Maar's nine-year relationship and presents Maar in a softer, more colourful light than many earlier portraits. Picasso produced numerous depictions of Maar, while Maar insisted that his portraits were 'all Picassos' and not true likenesses. He often depicted Maar as a tortured, tearful figure tied to Spanish civil war suffering and alleged abuse. The portrait was completed in July 1943, shown only a few times outside Picasso's Rue des Grands Augustins atelier, and was sold into a private collection in August 1944; the current seller inherited it and remains anonymous.

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