Top of the Lots: Photographs of three

TOP of the LOTS

Photographs of some of the 20th-century’s greatest cultural icons go under the hammer this month in the UK and France

It was the face that launched a thousand T-shirts. Now 130 photos of Che Guevara, along with Fidel Castro and Raul Castro – many of which have never been seen before – are part of an online sale of the personal possessions of the Cuban leader.

Some 73 of the original prints, which have a pre-sale guide of £50,000, were taken by Castro’s personal photographer, Alberto Korda.

They span the earliest days of the Cuban Revolution, to Castro’s last years and come from the estate of Fidel Castro’s long-term mistress, Natty Revuelta Clews.

Dora Maar

Meanwhile, on June 27-28, the Parisian auction house Artcurial is offering 750 photographs in 400 lots by Pablo Picasso’s mistress and muse – the French photographer, Dora Maar. The majority of the archive is unpublished, made up of personal images taken during her years with the Spanish artist.

Left Ernesto “Che” Guevara (19281967), one of 130 photographs in the online sale

Above As well as photographs, the sale includes personal possessions of the leaders of the Cuban revolution, including Che Guevara’s signed water bottle, which has an estimate of £100,000

Below Fidel Castro (1926-2016) doing pull-ups, part of the archive expected to make £50,000

Right Lee Miller (1907-1977), Dora Maar against a leafy background, c. 1936, has an estimate of €2,500-€3,500

Below right Dora Maar (1907-1997) Pablo Picasso in an armchair in Mougins, near Cannes, c. 1936, has an estimate of €2,500-€3,500

Bottom right Fidel Castro (1926-2016) eating a Chinese meal washed down with a bottle of Coca-Cola, is part of the online sale this month

Picasso’s Dora Maar

Picasso’s 1939 portrait of his mistress Dora Maar sold for $21.6m in Hong Kong in April, making it the second most expensive Picasso work sold in the region.

At the time of its painting, two years after Guernica, the world was on a knifeedge, an anxiety present in Picasso’s work.

With her head resting on her hand, Maar looks pensively toward the viewer, conveying a sense of intensity and gravity.

Her calmness contrasts with the fiery red background, a reference to Maar’s passionate and spirited character. The portrait shows her in a self-possessed and proud pose, her face both contemplative and inscrutable. Her most striking features – a thick mantle of rich black hair (which she kept long at Picasso’s request) and her wide, soulful eyes are powerfully portrayed. Maar was also Picasso’s muse for Weeping Woman, 1937.

Picasso and Maar met in Paris in 1936, at the café Les Deux Magots at a time when she was a wellestablished photographer with an interest in surrealism.

Throughout their nineyear affair, Picasso neither divorced his wife Olga, nor gave up his relationship with his previous mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. From the start of the Spanish civil war to the end of WWII, they remained close and influenced each other’s work.

The Fidel Castro collection, including a number of his personal possessions, as well as photographs, will be on show at the Royal Yacht Hotel, Jersey, Channel Islands on June 15 from 2-8pm alongside the online sale which ends on June 23. For more details and to bid go to www. paulfrasercollectibles.com. Dora Maar’s photographs will be on public display from June 21-26 at Artcurial, 7 RondPoint des Champs-Elysées 75008 Paris before the sale on June 27-28.