Perhaps not generally known, but Ida Kar (1908-74) was a pioneer who photographed some of the most important artists of her generation – including Henry Moore, Georges Braque and Jean-Paul Sartre. Kar was born in Russia in 1908 and studied in Paris at the height of the surrealist movement. By the late 1930s she had set up her first studio in Cairo where she met her second husband, Victor Musgrave. They moved to London and threw themselves into the Bohemian lifestyle. He became one of the most important art dealers and she became one of the most important photographers.
The National Portrait Gallery announced that it hopes to change that by mounting an exhibition of nearly 100 photographs, some never publicly shown before, by a woman at the heart of postwar cultural life in London.
The full report can be found here, and the exhibition details here.
Photo: Ida Kar's photograph of Georges Braque, taken in 1960. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London
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