An unpublished painting by Pablo Picasso goes out to auction in Paris and a millionaire figure is expected

A portrait of the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso of your partner and muse Dora Maar It was presented this Thursday at a auction house in Paris. It is a practically unknown picture by the general public, according to experts.

Titled Women’s Bust with a flower hat (Dora Maar), the picture It was painted in July 1943 And he was in the hands of the family owner since 1944. To this day he had never been exposed, except in a private sample organized by the painter in his workshop in those years, explained the auctioneer Christophe Lucien.

The canvas, from Cubist style and full of color, It shows Dora Maar’s face with a flow from flowers and a sad expression. “This exceptional work marks a milestone in the history of art and in Picasso’s,” said Agnès Sevestre-Barbé, a painter specialist, presenting it.

When Picasso made this painting, one of the last portraits he made of Maar, he already knew what would be his new partner, Françoise Gilot. According to Sevestre-Barbé, that could explain the air of sadness on the woman’s face.

The artist often painted his partner for a decade. Until 1944, he did it with quite hard features, but in this last portrait it is rather soft, they stressed. Its bright colors are also exceptional, at a time when Picasso used dark tones.

The painting is almost a raw work, which It was never varnished or restoredand is only protected by simple rods, Lucien detailed enthusiastically.

An unusual work

The current owners inherited their grandfather’s work. This was acquired during the Nazi occupation, shortly before the release of Paris, between May and June 1944.

The fabric, which will be auctioned on October 24, “is estimated at some eight million euros ”(9.5 million dollars)”, According to Lucien, a low projection that could be shot, taking into account the amounts that were paid for other works by the author.

“A painting [de Picasso] And, above, a portrait of Dora Maar is something unusual. That is sold in France is even more rare, as it is in the market in general, ”Olivier Picasso, grandson of the painter, told AFP.

Several portraits of Dora Maar were mainly sold in the United States, in the big houses of Anglo -Saxon auctions. In 2006, Dora Maar with Cat achieved 95 million dollars in New York, after a woman sitting in a garden (1938), acquired in 1999 for 49 million dollars.

The Malaga artist, who died more than half a century ago, has at least half a dozen paintings that have exceeded 100 million dollars, including a woman with a clock, sold in November 2023 for 139.3 million, one of the highest prices achieved by the painter.

The authenticity of the work

Until now, the specialists of the Malaga teacher only knew a woman’s bust with a flower hat (Dora Maar), authenticated by the Picasso Administration, in black and white, thanks to the official catalog of his works, according to the drug auction house.

Some photographs of Brassaï -amigo de Picasso-, taken in 1944 in the painter’s Parisian workshop, also show the existence of the work. The date of July 11, 1943 is on the reverse of the fabric and the artist’s signature in the front of the upper left. Normally, Picasso signed his works when they left the workshop, which is also the case here, since in the images of Brazaï the canvas does not bear his name.

Dora Maar, whose real name was Henriette Théodora Markovic (1907-1997), was mostly photographer and became known for her innumerable portraits of Picasso.

Picasso made several paintings of her, as a woman who cries, in which she presents “her deep nature,” he said. She also inspired a series of fabrics on the subject of sitting women.