Picasso canvas reappears in public 80 years after it was painted

Painted by Pablo Picasso in Germany-occupied Paris during World War II, the oil features French artist Dora Maar, his partner for several years

Written by Vandana Kalra

Updated: September 19, 2025 06:38 PM IST

2 min read

Pablo Picasso's Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar)

Eighty years after its first owner purchased the painting, Pablo Picasso’s Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar) has been revealed to the public by the auction house Lucien Paris that will put it on sale on October 24. Measuring 80 cm x 60 cm, while the oil on canvas carries a reserve price of €8 million, it is expected to fetch much more.

Painted when the artist was 61 and living in Germany-occupied Paris during World War II, the protagonist of the fragmented portrait was French photographer and painter Dora Maar, with whom Picasso shared a long and turbulent relationship.

This was also the time when the artist was enduring the difficult circumstances of the war, through which he continued to paint. “His art then became a form of inner resistance. For him, it was better to paint something — anything — than to do nothing at all. Though world-famous, he endured the pressures of the Nazi regime: searches, interrogations, intimidation,” states Picasso specialist Agnès Sevestre-Barbé in the catalogue note.

Commenting on the artwork, Sevestre-Barbé notes, “This spectacular canvas, shielded from view for decades, painted in Paris in July 1943, shows how Picasso, in the midst of war, pursued his portraits of women with hats — here in a version of rare chromatic intensity. Buste de femme au chapeau à fleurs reveals a treatment midway between late Cubism and decorative stylisation… The face, framed by jet-black hair structured with emerald-green strands, is reconstructed in flat fields of vivid colour, without perspective or modelling. Picasso juxtaposes acid greens, matte reds, violets, deep blues, radiant yellows. Each segment of the face appears autonomous, intensifying the sensation of fragmentation.”

Acquired by a private collector in August 1944, the work has reportedly not been exhibited since and has never appeared at an auction. Before it was sold, it was documented in black-and-white in a catalogue by French art historian and critic Christian Zervos in 1962, with photographs taken by Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï between late April and early May 1944.

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