PARIS — Their story was singular from the start: Picasso fell for the dark Dora Maar when he saw her in a Left Bank cafe, methodically stabbing a knife into the table between her outstretched fingers. Sometimes, she missed and drew blood.

They loved each other for eight years. He painted her, she photographed him. A show at Paris' Picasso Museum explores all the ways the two artists fascinated each other, provoked each other and inspired each other.

"Picasso/Dora Maar," which opened Wednesday, includes nearly 250 works by both artists, with some of Maar's portraits of her lover on show for the first time. The museum acquired many never-printed negatives at auction after she died a recluse in 1997.

The artists' creative dialogue is visible in almost every work. One room displays Picasso's paintings of Minotaurs, his allegory for rough masculine virility. Maar's photos show a more playful side of the Minotaur — Picasso hamming it up at the beach in his swimming trunks, holding up a cow's skull like a mask.

Maar was Picasso's muse and model, inspiring him with her dark, feline beauty. He painted her with windblown hair at the beach, as a Sphinx, and often as a weeping woman, her upturned face contorted with grief.

When the two met in 1935 at Les Deux Magots cafe, Maar was already an established photographer in her late 20s. The 53-year-old artist, mired in a personal crisis, had stopped painting and was writing short poems.

Maar inspired him to try some photographic techniques, such as painting on glass to make negatives. She also helped him see his own work in new ways.

When he was painting "Guernica," his look at war's devastation, Maar documented its creation step-by-step, allowing him to see it in evolution — and possibly inspiring him to make the black-and-white painting more "photographic" as a result, said Anne Baldassari, the museum's director.

Some of those snapshots are well-known, while many others are on display for the first time. "Guernica" itself is not on show — the museum has no gallery big enough to hold it — but many preparatory sketches are.

In the 1940s, Picasso left Maar for another woman. Despite her unhappiness, Maar was not a victim in the relationship, Baldassari said, describing them as "two predators, two artists ready to do anything for their art."

Maar died in solitude at age 89, without money but with a stash of Picassos in her cluttered apartment. Many of those are on display, as are some tiny mementos that Maar treasured until her death: a scrap of paper with Picasso's blood on it, a note with the artist's poignant doodle — "Dora Maar, Dora Maar, Dora Maar."

The exhibit spans from 1935-1945, dark years for Picasso and for Europe. His native Spain was ensnared in civil war. Then, during World War II, the Nazis who occupied his adopted France, proclaimed his art degenerate and banned its exhibition. He also was put under surveillance. Many of his paintings from the time show his feelings of anguish for his country.

"Dora Maar helped Picasso create a body of work that lived up to the times," Baldassari said. "Perhaps he needed a woman who was as complex and as sad as Dora Maar to reach this level of expression."

"Picasso/Dora Maar" runs at Paris' Picasso Museum through May 22.