Why is everyone talking about Dora Maar in Madrid?
A luxury house, a forgotten photographer, a Madrid museum… and an exhibition that reshuffles the cards of artistic recognition for women.
Dora Maar: much more than a Picasso muse
Until September 14, 2025, Madrid’s Museo Lázaro Galdiano is hosting the exhibition “Dora Maar: Beyond Picasso”, organized by the Loewe Foundation as part of the PhotoEspaña festival. An ambitious project that places the French artist at the heart of the 20th-century avant-garde, far removed from the reduced – and reductive – figure of Pablo Picasso’s muse.
Street photographs, surrealist photomontages, previously unpublished archives… The exhibition offers a complete and nuanced vision of Dora Maar’s career, from the Parisian salons to the Spanish war zones of the 1930s. Far from the expected glamour, the raw aesthetics of her photographs reveal a bold, committed artist.
Loewe: when culture becomes a political act
This project is not just a marketing stunt. It’s a genuine cultural commitment on the part of Loewe, which intends to rehabilitate female artists who have been invisible in history. This positioning is not new: from Juergen Teller to the spectacular Shanghai retrospective in 2024, the Spanish brand is multiplying its forays into contemporary art.
Through its Foundation, Loewe is investing in a storytelling approach in which craftsmanship and cultural recognition become strategic. The aim? To consolidate its intellectual legitimacy while appealing to a clientele in search of meaning, like Louis Vuitton or Miu Miu, also active in the global artistic landscape.
A profitable cultural strategy
This artistic gamble has also paid off. By 2023, Loewe had increased its sales by 30% to 810 million euros. And the arrival of the duo Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez as Creative Directors could well usher in a new cycle, combining conceptual elegance with cultural commitment.
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