An overlooked Picasso muse enters the spotlight, thanks to a new show in Spain

There was a time when Dora Maar’s legacy was in danger of being eclipsed by her association with Pablo Picasso. But as perceptions shift, Maar (1907 - 1997) is slowly but surely regaining her rightful place in the spotlight.

The French photographer, painter and poet was a prolific artist in her own right, moving from a career as a commercial and fashion photographer to a key figure in the surrealist movement. Her influence has now been acknowledged by the Loewe Foundation, which is showing her work at Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid. The exhibition, 'Dora Maar: Photography and Drawings' unites her street photography in Spain with a previously unseen archive of works on paper.

Maar’s drawings are deceptively simple; created in pencil and India ink, they appear at first glance to be impressionistic interpretations of domesticity, but soon spin off into more abstract mish-mashes of cubist forms, an early indicator of her surrealist future.

Before meeting Picasso in 1935, and becoming his muse, Maar was already established as an avant-garde artist. In the portraits and photographs on display, we see the Picasso through Maar's eyes. In one set of photographs, she documents how Picasso’s Guernica (1937), the artist's emotional response to the bombing of the Basque town, slowly develops over 35 days.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, we follow Maar to Barcelona, where she travelled in 1935 to capture the intense climate in the run-up to the Spanish Civil War. Her images of traditional street life – fisherman and basket weavers litter her photographs – are a jarring foil to the disadvantaged communities she photographed, from sex workers to impoverished elderly people. At a time when these people fell through the cracks of society, Maar’s acknowledgement was a surrealist bid to look below the surface.

Throughout, Maar’s commitment to representing the hidden, or uncomfortable is celebrated, making this show a timely, if overdue, retrospective for a vital 20th-century artist.

'Dora Maar: Photographs and Drawings' is on view until 14 September at Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid