“[A] spirited and deeply researched project.... [Benkemoun’s] affection for her subject is infectious. This book gives a satisfying treatment to a woman who has been confined for decades to a Cubist’s limited interpretation.” — Joumana Khatib, The New York Times Merging biography, memoir, and cultural history, this compelling book, a bestseller in France, traces the life of Dora Maar through a serendipitous encounter with the artist’s address book. In search of a replacement for his lost Hermès agenda, Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens it and finds inside private notes dating back to 1951—twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde. After realizing that the address book belonged to Dora Maar—Picasso’s famous “Weeping Woman” and a brilliant artist in her own right—Benkemoun embarks on a two-year voyage of discovery to learn more about this provocative, passionate, and enigmatic woman, and the role that each of these figures played in her life. Longlisted for the prestigious literary award Prix Renaudot, Finding Dora Maar is a fascinating and breathtaking portrait of the artist. This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

For the first time, a comprehensive exploration of Dora Maar’s enigmatic photography reveals her as an extraordinary and influential artist in her own right. Dora Maar (born Henriette Théodora Markovitch, 1907–1997) was active at the height of Surrealism in France. She was recognized as a key member of the movement and maintained professional relationships with many of its prominent figures, such as André Breton, Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Man Ray. However, her standing as the one-time muse and mistress of Pablo Picasso—his famous “Weeping Woman”—has long eclipsed her creative output and minimized her influence. Richly illustrated with 240 key works showcasing Maar’s inimitable acumen as a photographer, this book examines the full arc of her career for the very first time. Subjects include her innovative commercial and fashion photography, her approach to the nude and eroticism, engagement with political groups, interest in socially concerned photography, affiliation with the Surrealist movement, and hitherto unknown work from her reclusive late career, providing a dynamic and multifaceted examination of an important artist.

A collection of memorabilia brings together the art of the Surrealist photographer and artist while documenting her seven-year affair with Pablo Picasso and considering her role as a friend and sexually unconventional woman.

Originally published as La mujer que llora (Barcelona: Planeta, 2013).

"She was to be Picasso's lover and muse for seven years. In that time she photographed him at work and play, in the studio and on the beach, alone or with friends such as Man Ray, Andre Breton, Jacqueline Lamba and Paul Eluard. In early 1957 she created a unique photographic record of the painting of Guernica, Picasso's searing protest against the carnage of the Spanish Civil War. Dora's own features were immortalized in the lamp-bearing woman in Guernica and in the harrowing distortions of the Weeping Woman, the image in which Picasso achieved his most acute expression of the public and private anguish of those years.".

A striking debut novel about the power of a father’s love for his son and the heart-wrenching choices he has to make in the face of death. Yanis’s world is Pierre, the son he raised as a single parent. For nearly twenty years, Yanis spent his nights as a cabdriver with Pierre always at his side, so as not to miss a moment in each other’s company. Yanis and Pierre also share a love of diving—in pursuit of that magical moment when they lose themselves in the deep sea. When enveloped by the natural world, father and son relish an escape from life’s pressures. But for some time, Pierre has been tired. Too tired. Despite how attentively Yanis watched him, Yanis missed the early signs of illness. Faced with the harsh reality of his son’s numbered days, Yanis struggles to invent a life his son won’t have the time to live.

This intimate account offers a new, unexpected understanding of the artist’s work and of the vibrant 1930s surrealist scene. In 1938, just as she was leaving Mexico for her first solo exhibition in New York, Frida Kahlo was devastated to learn from her husband, Diego Rivera, that he intended to divorce her. This latest blow followed a long series of betrayals, most painful of all his affair with her beloved younger sister, Cristina, in 1934. In early 1939, anxious and adrift, Kahlo traveled from the United States to France—her only trip to Europe, and the beginning of a unique period of her life when she was enjoying success on her own. Now, for the first time, this previously overlooked part of her story is brought to light in exquisite detail. Marc Petitjean takes the reader to Paris, where Kahlo spends her days alongside luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Dora Maar, and Marcel Duchamp. Using Kahlo’s whirlwind romance with the author’s father, Michel Petitjean, as a jumping-off point, The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris provides a striking portrait of the artist and an inside look at the history of one of her most powerful, enigmatic paintings.

James Lord first arrived in Paris toward the end of World War II, a brash but insignificant young man bent on achieving distinction. His immediate priority was nothing less than to make the acquaintance of the greatest artist of our century: Pablo Picasso. How he managed to do this, to persuade the artist to draw not one but two portraits of him, and to become a welcome visitor to Picasso's studio is only the beginning of this haunting and memorable narrative by one of the most gifted and discerning chroniclers of modern art. Picasso and Dora tells the story of Lord's intense but ambivalent relationship with the great artist. More important, however, it relates with detailed candor his long, intimate, complex relationship with Dora Maar, the mistress from whom Picasso was just parting when the young soldier met them. A legendary and reclusive figure, a gifted photographer and painter, still living today in the apartment and country house where Picasso installed her more than half a century ago, Dora Maar is at once the most important and least known of Picasso's loves. Lord's memoir brings her to life with the bold and incisive aptitude for psychological truth which has always characterized his work. The cast of secondary characters in this vivid evocation of the postwar Parisian art world includes Balthus, Jacques Lacan, Andre Masson, Giacometti, and numerous others. Picasso and Dora represents a new - and permanent - contribution to the history of art in our time.

For centuries, artists have been inspired by muses to create poignant works of art and literature; this beautifully illustrated volume is a celebration of these women and the artists they influenced. American Lee Miller was a successful New York fashion model before traveling to Paris to become the apprentice, lover, and muse of surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray; Nancy Cunard, British writer, heiress, and political activist, captivated numerous members of the twentieth century's art and literary circles, including Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot; and Parisian-born artist and poet Dora Maar had a profound influence on the work of her notorious lover, Pablo Picasso.

The classic Photofile series brings together the best work of the world's greatest photographers in an attractive format and at a reasonable price. Handsome and collectible, the books each contain reproductions in color and/or duotone, plus a critical introduction and a bibliography. Paris in the early 1920s saw the growth of a new art form called surrealism. Both a formal movement and a spiritual orientation, surrealism embraced ethics and politics as well as the arts. Surrealists sought to create a medium that liberated the subconscious mind, and many artists and photographers captured this revolution through photographic images. This new survey includes works by Max Ernst, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, René Magritte, Meret Oppenheim, and more.