Francis Picabia | |
|---|---|
 Francis Picabia, 1919, insideDanse de Saint-Guy | |
| Born | Francis-Marie Martinez Picabia (1879-01-22)22 January 1879 Paris, France |
| Died | 30 November 1953(1953-11-30) (aged 74) Paris, France |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work | Amorous Parade |
| Movement | Cubism,abstract art,Dada,Surrealism |
| Spouse | Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia |
Francis Picabia (French:[fʁɑ̃sispikabja]: bornFrancis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a Frenchavant-garde painter, writer,filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, andtypographist closely associated withDada.[1]
When considering the many styles that Picabia painted in, observers have described his career as "shape-shifting"[2] or "kaleidoscopic".[3] After experimenting withImpressionism andPointillism, Picabia became associated withCubism. His highlyabstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the early major figures of theDada movement in the United States and in France before denouncing it in 1921.[3] He was later briefly associated withSurrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.[4]
Francis Picabia was born in Paris of a French mother and aCuban father of Spanish descent. Some sources would have his father as of aristocratic Spanish descent, whereas others consider him of non-aristocratic Spanish descent, from the region ofGalicia.[5] His birth year of 1879 coincided with the Spanish-CubanLittle War; and though Picabia was born inParis, his father was involved in Cuban-French relations and would later serve asattaché at the Cuban legation in Paris (see theTreaty of 1898). The family ties to Cuba would be important in Picabia's life later on.
The family was affluent, and both parents encouraged Picabia to pursue an art career.[6] Picabia's mother died oftuberculosis when he was five, and he was raised by his father.[7]
Picabia's artistic ability was apparent from his youth. In 1894, he copied a collection of Spanish paintings that belonged to his grandfather, switching the copies for the originals and selling the originals to finance his stamp collection.[8] A lifelong philanderer,[2] Picabia eloped to Switzerland in 1897 with one of his mistresses, causing his father to briefly cut off contact with him.[7]
During the late 1890s, Picabia began to study art underFernand Cormon and others atÉcole des Arts Decoratifs, Cormon's academy at 104 boulevard de Clichy, whereVan Gogh andToulouse-Lautrec had also studied. He studied underFernand Cormon,Ferdinand Humbert, and Albert Charles Wallet for two years.[9] From the age of twenty, Picabia lived by painting. Subsequently, he inherited money from his mother, leaving him far wealthier than most of his contemporaries in the art world. He began buying at least one newsports car each year,[2] and ultimately owned 127 over the course of his life.[7]
Early in his career, from 1903 to 1908, Picabia was influenced by theImpressionist paintings ofAlfred Sisley. His subject matter included small churches, lanes, roofs of Paris, riverbanks, wash houses, and barges. This led critics to question his originality, saying that he copied Sisley, that his cathedrals looked likeMonet cathedrals, or that he painted likeSignac.[10] He soon came to feel he was working in an outdated style and began to look for a new approach.[2]
From 1909, his style changed as he came under the influence of a group of artists soon to be calledCubists. These artists would later form theGolden Section (Section d'Or). The same year, Picabia marriedGabrielle Buffet. (They would divorce in 1930.)
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Around 1911 Picabia joined thePuteaux Group, whose members he had met at the studio ofJacques Villon inPuteaux, a commune in the western suburbs of Paris. There he became friends with artistMarcel Duchamp and close friends withGuillaume Apollinaire. Other group members includedAlbert Gleizes,Roger de La Fresnaye,Fernand Léger andJean Metzinger.
In 1913, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors held the first major show ofmodernist art in New York City, which would become known as theArmory Show. The wealthy Picabia was the only member of the Cubist group to personally attend the Armory Show, as the others could not afford to do so, and he also contributed four paintings.[2] The American press was largely hostile to the show, describing it as bizarre or deviant, but Picabia was widely interviewed and discussed as the only representative of the movement available. He immediately became a major name in New York's artistic circles.[2]
Avant-garde art dealerAlfred Stieglitz also gave Picabia asolo show,Exhibition of New York studies by Francis Picabia, at hisgallery 291 (formerlyLittle Galleries of the Photo-Secession), 17 March – 5 April 1913.[2] There, Picabia displayed work that he had created in the past few months in New York. Influenced byabstract art from the Armory Show such as that ofWassily Kandinsky, he was now creating abstract works of his own. When he returned to Paris in April 1913, he formally broke with the Cubists.[2]
From 1913 to 1915 Picabia traveled to New York City several times. During that same era, France became embroiled inwar. In 1915, Picabia again traveled to the United States en route to Cuba to buy molasses for a friend of his—the director of a sugar refinery. He landed in New York in June 1915. Though the stopover was ostensibly meant to be a simple port of call, he decided to remain there for a while to continue working on his art.[2] He did not return to France until the war's conclusion.[2]
The following years can be characterized as Picabia'sproto-Dada or "machinist" period, consisting mainly of hisportraits mécaniques.[11] Picabia was first impressed by mechanical advances on his initial, 1913 visit to New York, and on returning to Europe, he was impressed by futurist painters such asNatalia Goncharova andMikhail Larionov. Picabia was particularly influenced by the "machine style" ofMarcel Duchamp, in which the artist used materials such as metal and glass as well as mechanical drawing implements.[11] In 1915, Picabia began to create and exhibit his own drawings and prints of mysterious machines and apparatuses to reflect the coming of theMachine Age. He continued in this style for almost a decade, exhibiting a large solo show of his machinist work in 1922. In 1923, he abruptly discontinued his work in the style, as he had with several previous styles.[11]
In this period, the magazine291 devoted an entire issue to him, he metMan Ray, Gabrielle and Duchamp joined him, drugs and alcohol became a problem and his health declined. He suffered fromdropsy andtachycardia.[12]
Later, in 1916, while inBarcelona and within a small circle of refugee artists that includedAlbert Gleizes and his wifeJuliette Roche,Marie Laurencin,Olga Sacharoff,Robert Delaunay andSonia Delaunay, he started hisDada periodical391 (published byGaleries Dalmau), modeled on Stieglitz's own periodical. He continued the periodical with the help of Marcel Duchamp in the United States. InZürich, seeking treatment for depression and suicidal impulses, he had metTristan Tzara, whose radical ideas thrilled Picabia. Back in Paris, and now with his mistress Germaine Everling, he was in the city of "les assises dada" whereAndré Breton,Paul Éluard,Philippe Soupault andLouis Aragon met at Certa, aBasque bar in thePassage de l'Opera. Picabia, the provocateur, was back home.
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Picabia continued his involvement in the Dada movement through 1919 in Zürich and Paris, before breaking away from it after developing an interest inSurrealist art. (SeeCannibale, 1921.) He denounced Dada in 1921,[3] and issued a personal attack against Breton in the final issue of391, in 1924. The same year, he appeared briefly in theRené Clair short filmEntr'acte, which would become one of the most famoussurrealist films of the decade.[13]
Reflecting on his break with Dada, Picabia wrote, "If you want to have clean ideas, change them like shirts."[3] His career would later be remembered in part for his wide range of artistic styles.[3][2] In 1922,André Breton relaunchedLittérature magazine with cover images by Picabia, to whom he gave carte blanche for each issue. Picabia drew on religious imagery,erotic iconography, and the iconography of games of chance.[14]
In 1925, Picabia returned to figurative painting, producing a series of dense, garish paintings known as his "Monster" period. These would later be an important influence on German painterSigmar Polke.[6] From 1927 to 1930, Picabia produced his "Transparencies" series, paintings that combined images fromHigh Renaissance art with figures from contemporary popular culture.[6]
During the 1930s became a close friend of and received encouragement from the modernist novelistGertrude Stein,[15] painting a portrait of her in 1933.[16] In 1940, he married Olga Mohler on 14 June,the same day that the Nazis seized Paris. Shortly after, he moved toSouthern France, where his work took a surprising turn: he produced a series of paintings based on the nude glamour photos in French "girlie" magazines likeParis Sex-Appeal,[17][18] in a garish style which appears to subvert traditional, academic nude painting. Some of these went to an Algerian merchant who sold them, and so it passed that Picabia came to decorate brothels across North Africa under the Occupation.[citation needed]
Before the end of World War II, he returned to Paris, where he resumed abstract painting and writing poetry. A largeretrospective of his work was held at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris in the spring of 1949. Picabia died in Paris in 1953 and was interred in theCimetière de Montmartre.
He was married in 1909 toGabrièle Buffet-Picabia, a French art critic and writer affiliated with Dadaism and later an organizer of the French resistance. They had four children. They divorced in 1930. Their tumultuous union is re-imagined by great-granddaughterAnne Berest inThe Postcard, a semi-autobiographical French novel published in 2021.[19]
Public collections holding works by Picabia include theMuseum of Modern Art andSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum inNew York; thePhiladelphia Museum of Art; theArt Institute of Chicago; theTate Gallery, London and theMusée National d'Art Moderne, Paris.
In the mid-1980s two of Picabia's Dada writings,Who Knows andYes No were published in English byHanuman Books and in 2007MIT Press published a large book of his poetry and other writings in English calledI Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation that was translated by Marc Lowenthal.
A major retrospective of Picabia's work in the United States was held in 2016 atKunsthaus Zürich and then from 2016 to 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.[20] The retrospective was widely discussed by international art critics such as Philippe Dagen fromLe Monde.[21]
Among the artists influenced by Picabia's work are the American artistsDavid Salle andJulian Schnabel, the German artistSigmar Polke, and the Italian artistFrancesco Clemente.[22][23][24][25] In 1996, French artistJean-Jacques Lebel initiated and co-curated the exhibitionPicabia, Dalmau 1922 (with reference to Picabia's solo exhibition atGaleries Dalmau in 1922) shown atFundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona and theMusée National d'Art Moderne,Centre Pompidou. In 2002, the artistsPeter Fischli & David Weiss installedSuzanne Pagé's retrospective devoted to Picabia at themusée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris (MAMVP).
In 2003, a Picabia painting once owned byAndré Breton sold for US$1.6 million.[26] Picabia'sVolucelle II (c. 1922) sold forUS$8,789,000 atSotheby's in 2013, then the highest price for one of the artist's works.[27][28] A new record was set in 2022 with the sale ofPavonia at Sotheby's for US$11 million.[27]
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