Although she was well known as a friend, model and "muse" of Picasso, it is often forgotten that Dora Maar herself was a successful artist. Long before her yearlong liaison with Picasso, she had produced an outstanding and comprehensive collection of photography and was an important artist.

Nevertheless, the relationship with Picasso, the character and disposition of the person Dora Maar and her personality as a woman, both in publications about Picasso and in the few that are dedicated to her, assume an unusually great significance in art-history literature. Naturally, the person and the artist Dora Maar are inextricably interlinked. For example, her close link to the Surrealists can be ascribed equally to her much de...