Dora Maar au Chat

Spanish artist Pablo Picasso painted this Dora Maar au Chat in 1941 during the Nazi occupation of France, depicting his muse and fellow artist seated with a small black cat on her shoulders. The large canvas, over four feet tall, fractures her form into faceted Cubist planes and bold color blocks, capturing both her intensity and the tensions of their relationship during wartime.

Dora Maar (1907-1997) was a French photographer and Surrealist artist who exhibited alongside Man Ray and Salvador Dalí before meeting Picasso in 1935. She documented the creation of Guernica and profoundly influenced his work. Later she remarked that his portraits of her were "all Picassos. Not one is Dora Maar."

Picasso called Dora his "Afghan cat," and the feline on her shoulder carries symbolic weight, linking cats with female cunning in classical art tradition. In May 2006, the painting sold at Sotheby's for $95.2 million, then the second-highest auction price ever paid for any artwork.