Nan Colton as Dora Maar, Picasso’s Muse

Playwright and storyteller Nan Colton will bring to life Dora Maar (1907–1997): Painter, photographer, poet and Picasso’s “muse,” Dora photographed Picasso creating the famous black and white anti-war mural, Guernica. She captured with her camera each modification of the creation of a modern masterpiece. Her goal was to “to preserve photographically not the stages but the metamorphoses of a picture.” Maar is Picasso’s principal model, whom he often represented in tears –“The Weeping Woman”. Dora’s influence was to stimulate one of the most innovative periods of Picasso’s career. The complex personal and artistic liaison between Picasso and Dora would last nearly nine years spanning the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War to the end of the Second World War. (Her passionate and disastrous liaison with Picasso, ended in 1943.)

In this presentation DORA MAAR shares her point of view of the roles she played as she stood literally center stage of the Surrealist movement as it was sweeping the art world of the time. It is a fictitious conversation recalling the most passionate and disastrous love affair of her life and her assessment during her later years of what she gained and lost.

Nan Colton is a professional playwright, director, storyteller, actress and Literary and Performance Teaching Artist. She has performed and lectured professionally on stages throughout South Africa, Great Britain and the United States.

This is Colton’s tenth performance to benefit the Gulfport Senior Center Foundation. She has previously portrayed other important women artists and writers including Margaret Bourke-White, Virginia Woolf, Georgia O’Keefe, Agatha Christie and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In addition, she has brought influential women to the Gulfport stage including Eleanor Roosevelt and Mina Miller Edison along with her original character, Mrs. Tidbit.

Artist statement: “In all my work I strive to make the expression of my work relevant, entertaining and pertinent for the audience. I diligently research the historic and personal climate that molded the person I am portraying.”

Event Website: https://gulfportseniorfoundation.org/2024/07/nan-colton-as-dora-maar/