This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

A painting of a chilly and awkward encounter between two women who were both lovers of Picasso has gone on display for the first time in the UK.

The large painting from 1937 is part of the first UK retrospective of the work of Dora Maar, which opens at Tate Modern in London on Wednesday. Titled The Conversation, it shows Maar with her back to the viewer, alongside a blank-faced Marie-Thérèse Walter.

“I think it’s fair to say that it was an uncomfortable relationship,” said Tate Modern assistant curator Emma Lewis. “We know that Picasso, for whatever reason, kept these two women in his life in uncomfortable proximity to one another.”

Picasso and Walter became lovers in 1927 after he spotted her leaving a Paris metro station. He approached her, grabbed her arm and declared: “I’m Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together.”

They had a daughter in 1935, the same year Picasso met Maar, who became his next lover and muse.

The painting is the only known time that Maar addressed the nature of her complicated relationship with Walter. It has only ever been publicly exhibited twice before, never in the UK, and is being loaned by Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso.

Lewis said the exhibition was much more than an exploration of the eight years Maar spent with Picasso; it was a celebration of an important artist and photographer whose career spanned six decades.

Nevertheless, Picasso had to feature, she said. “We could have downplayed the Picasso years, we could have almost ignored them … that could have been one curatorial approach. But that would have been a missed opportunity to look at their relationship in ways which have not been done before.”

More than 200 works are on display, including early fashion and advertising photography work, and street photography from the early 1930s in Barcelona, Paris and London capturing the grim realities of life during Europe’s economic depression.

Maar was an important surrealist artist and the show features more than 20 surrealist photographs, including Portrait of Ubu 1936, an image that she always wanted to be a mystery but is thought to be an armadillo foetus.

After the second world war, Maar exhibited abstract landscape paintings to acclaim before gradually withdrawing from artistic circles. It means the second half of her life became shrouded in mystery and speculation.

The show concludes with a display of camera-less photographs she made in the darkroom in the 1980s.

Lewis said: “We hope people will leave appreciating the tremendous breadth of Maar’s career and come away with a more nuanced understanding of her time with Picasso.”

• Dora Maar is at Tate Modern from 20 November-15 March.