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Picasso painting unseen for 80 years revealed in Paris

Thursday 18 September 2025 - 11:28

By: Sahili Aya

Picasso painting unseen for 80 years revealed in Paris

A Paris auction house has unveiled a painting by Pablo Picasso that had remained hidden from public view for eight decades. The work, titled Bust of a Woman in a Flowery Hat (Dora Maar), was completed during the German occupation of Paris in 1944 and has since been kept in a private collection.

The portrait depicts Dora Maar, the French photographer and painter who was Picasso’s partner for nearly a decade. Unlike some of his darker and more tormented depictions of her, this rediscovered canvas shows Maar in vibrant colors, offering a softer and more intimate vision.

Picasso and Maar’s relationship was famously tumultuous, marked by both artistic collaboration and personal conflict. She inspired some of his most iconic works, such as Weeping Woman, often interpreted as a symbol of both personal suffering and the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War.

Art experts note that the rediscovery of this painting sheds new light on the complexity of Picasso’s vision of Maar, as well as the tensions within their relationship at a time when he was preparing to leave her for the younger artist Françoise Gilot.