art-Picasso.com
Pablo Picasso 1881-1973
©Pablo Picasso - 1944 Bust of a Woman
 Bust of a Woman |
From Tate Gallery, London:
This portrait of the photographer Dora Maar was painted on 5 May 1944. Her reconfigured features may reflect the complex atmosphere of the final weeks of the Nazi Occupation of Paris. Deprivation and tension remained high in the city. In February two of Picasso’s closest Jewish friends – the poets Robert Desnos and Max Jacob – had been deported. Yet there were also signs of defiance and hope: in March, Maar took part alongside Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in a clandestine performance of Picasso’s play Desire Caught by the Tail, directed by Albert Camus.