Dora Maar’s Anti-Fascist Worldview Influenced Picasso’s Art

The story of the first encounter between Pablo Picasso and his muse, Dora Maar, has been much mythologised. It is said that Maar, aged 29 at the time, was seated alone at the popular cultural hotspot, Les Deux Magots, playing a game in which she stabbed a small knife between her fingers into the wood of the table. From time to time, she narrowly missed and her hand was covered with blood.