Early in 1936 the poet Paul Eluard introduced Picasso to a 30-year-old photographer and painter named Dora Maar, who rapidly became the most important woman in his life.
A strong and serious character, Dora was, unlike Olga and Marie Therese Walther, able to understand and even help with Picasso's work. However, Picasso's relationship with Marie Therese continued, and for years he alternated visits to Marie Therese and her daughter Maia with trips to the South of France and elsewhere in which he was accompanied by Dora Maar.
His many portraits of Dora are recognizably related to one another: her dark good looks, round chin and long painted fingernails, themselves highly distinctive, are heightened by Picasso's angular treatment and use of dramatic blacks and reds. As always, Picasso's life and work were so closely intertwined that the equation 'new woman = new style' became virtually axiomatic.
