The Place Ménerbes

The village of Ménerbes holds the official classification as a one of “the prettiest villages of France.” It is part of the regional park of the Luberon, a protected game and wildlife area covering the mountains of the Luberon range and located within Provence, or southern France. Dating back to the Paleolithic age, the village sits on a narrow spine of a hilltop. Nostradamus claimed it looked like a ship in an ocean of vineyards. In the Roman period the village was known as Minerva, after the goddess of crafts, poetry and wisdom as well as the inventor of music.

Maison Dora Maar, an 18th century town house was the property of General-Baron Robert (1772-1831), a native of Ménerbes who received numerous honors during the Napoleonic wars in Spain, and was bought in 1944 by Dora Maar, surrealist artist and photographer. Companion and muse of Picasso from the late 1930s to the early 1940s, following their breakup Dora spent each summer in solitude in Ménerbes. After her death in 1997, an American arts patron, Nancy Brown Negley, bought and renovated the house to create a residency for writers, academics and artists.

Dora Maar her Story

Maar was the ideal surrealist woman: artistic, rebellious, intelligent, beautiful, sophisticated, and a little bit crazy. Before Picasso, Theodora Markovich took a scalpel to her name, instinctively knowing the importance of reinventing herself. She was determined, unafraid, and soon earned the nickname “La cabocharde” (the stubborn one). By age 27, two years before she met Picasso, Maar was a successful commercial photographer, financially independent, in a country where, as a woman, she did not have the right to vote.