The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Père Ubu

Date:: 1936
Medium:: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions:: Image: 39.7 x 29.2 cm (15 5/8 x 11 1/2 in.) Mount: 64.7 x 49.5 cm (25 1/2 x 19 1/2 in.)
Classification:: Photographs
Credit Line:: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, by exchange, 2005
Accession Number:: 2005.100.443
Rights and Reproduction:: © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

This artwork is not on display

Description

The Surrealist artist Dora Maar is better known as Picasso's dark-haired model and companion in the late 1930s than for her astonishing works. Her incarnation of the bestial nature of man is titled after the infamous and absurd dictatorial antihero of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi (1896). Maar's imaginative evocation of the pear-shaped, breast-plated Ubu in the monstrous reality of a baby armadillo is one of the most compelling and repellent of Surrealist photographs.
Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: Signed and dated in pencil on mount, recto BR; inscribed in pencil on mount, recto BL: "Portrait d'Ubu" [underlined]; paper label with red border affixed to BR corner mount recto with inscription in red pencil: "71"; inscribed in pencil on paper label affixed to mount, verso TR: "45" and stamped "210"; circular stamp on mount, verso TC: "Duanes Exposition - Paris" [upside-down]; stamped below label on mount, verso: "GALERIE ROBERT // keizersgracht 5 & 7 // AMSTERDAM - C"
Provenance

Georges Hugnet; Private Collection, New York; [Mark Kelman Works of Art, New York, by 1978]; Gilman Paper Company Collection, New York, May 10, 1978
See also
Who
Dora Maar (2)
What
Photographs (32,550)

Gelatin silver prints (8,690)
Where
Europe (148,586)

France (52,276)
When
A.D. 1900-present (77,516)
In the Museum
Photographs (29,384)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Photography and Surrealism

France, 1900 A.D.–present