Born in 1907 in Paris to a French mother and a Croatian father, Dora Maar (Henriette Dora Markovitch) first studied painting at the Académie Julian before turning to photography. Characterized by a bold artistic vision and technical experiments such as photomontage and double exposure, her photographic work captured the imagination of the Parisian surrealist circle, which included figures such as André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and Man Ray.

Like Impressionism, which rejected the representation of objective reality, Surrealism embraced photography, which traditionally captured reality, to offer new perspectives. Dora Maar made a significant contribution to surrealist photography by exploring innovative techniques and creating captivating images imbued with a dreamlike and enigmatic atmosphere.

Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso formed an intense and complex artistic duo in the 1930s and 1940s. Their collaboration produced iconic works such as 'Guernica,' where Picasso's expressionism fused with Maar's distinctive photographic sensibility to create a powerful visual denunciation of the horrors of war.