oil on paper, 20 x 26 cm;
The artist’s “Post-Mortem.” The painting is on paper
which is also one of the pages of her planner/journal. Dora, who created this
work (we do not know if this is its final version), noted that despite her desire
to sell it, this painting would be released for sale in 1998—hence the
with a date stamp inside a circle: “DM 1998.” As is well known, Dora Maar passed away on July 16,
July 1997, without living to see the sale of this particular work. The painting traveled
a long journey before it found its way to a Polish collector. It was exhibited, among other places, in
Hong Kong, Marbella, Paris, and Kolno, Poland, where it was featured in an exhibition of over 100
works by Pablo Picasso. Interestingly, thanks precisely to Dora’s painting, the exhibition
was granted honorary patronage by the Croatian Embassy, as Croatia is the artist’s half-homeland.
The owner also included a print with the painting being sold, which was created
in pencil and a composite of Dora Maar’s portrait, as a tribute to the late artist.
Both the exhibition and the investigation into the work’s provenance, its authenticity, and
the preparation of the work’s description—were carried out by an experienced team of art curators
with a track record of collective successes in organizing exhibitions of works by Marc
Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and, most recently, an exhibition of Polish
surrealism.
