Dora Maar: Paris in the Time of Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, and Picasso

Most famous as the subject of several Pablo Picasso paintings, including “Dora Maar aux ongles verts” (“Dora Maar with Green Fingernails”), Maar is usually seen as a minor player at best in Paris during the 1920s. Indeed, German-born art dealer and collector Heinz Berggruen once said, “I hope Dora would forgive me for saying that she is inconceivable without Picasso.”

But with Louise Baring’s beautiful new book, Maar gets her own showcase, a much-deserved study of Maar as an artist, rather than Maar as someone else’s subject, even if that someone else is (arguably) the 20th century’s most famous painter.

Here we see not only Picasso through Maar’s eyes but Parisian life in the 1920s captured in bizarrely charming photographs and stunningly modern photo montages, of which Maar was a master and innovator.

Baring’s book will be a welcome addition to the shelves of anyone interested in the artistic life of Paris in the 1920s.