Dora Maar au Chat | |
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Artist | Pablo Picasso |
Year | 1941 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 128.3 cm × 95.3 cm (50.5 in × 37.5 in) |
Location | Private collection |
Dora Maar au Chat (Dora Maar with Cat) is a 1941 painting by Pablo Picasso. It depicts Dora Maar, the painter's lover, seated on a chair with a small cat perched on her shoulders. The work is one of the world's most expensive paintings.
The canvas (50 ½ by 37 ½ inches / 128.3 cm by 95.3 cm) was one of many portraits of Dora Maar painted by Pablo Picasso over their nearly decade-long relationship. Picasso fell in love at the age of 55 with the 29-year-old Maar and the couple soon began living together. This painting was made during the year 1941, when the Nazis were occupying France. In the 1940s, the painting was obtained by Chicago collectors Leigh and Mary Block. They sold the painting in 1963 After that, the painting was never shown until the 21st century.
During 2005 and 2006, Dora Maar au Chat, then owned by the Gidwitz family of Chicago, was shown worldwide as part of Sotheby's exhibitions in London, Hong Kong and New York. It came up for sale in an auction of Impressionist/Modern works held at Sotheby's on May 3, 2006 in New York and making it the second-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. An anonymous Russian [1] bidder present at the New York auction won the work with a final bid of US$95,216,000, well exceeding the pre-auction US$50 million estimates.
The identity of the bidder, who spent more than US$100 million in total, and purchased an 1883 Monet seascape and a 1978 Chagall in addition to the Picasso, was a topic of much speculation. Apparently a novice bidder, though possibly acting as an agent for a more well-known collector, the anonymous buyer may have been unknown at the start of the auction even to Sotheby's officials. As of mid-2007, the ownership of the Dora Maar au Chat is still unknown to the general public, although rumors have focused on the Georgian mining magnate and former Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina (Boris) Ivanishvili, who sold his Moscow bank a week before the auction for $550 m.