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.
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Inscription: Signed and dated in pencil on mount, recto BR: "Dora Maar 36" 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"
Georges Hugnet; Private Collection, New York; [Mark Kelman Works of Art, New York, by 1978]; Gilman Paper Company Collection, New York, May 10, 1978
New Burlington Galleries. "International Surrealist Exhibition," June 1936–July 1936.
Ginza Gallery. "Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme," June 1937–July 1937.
Galerie Robert, Amsterdam. "Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme," June 1937–Spring 1938.
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