In reading New York Magazine, I noticed an advertisement for an exhibition of Francis Picabia at the Museum of Modern Art through March 19th 2017. It piqued my interest in learning more about this artist.
Picabia (1879-1953), the great modern artist, was born in Paris to a Cuban father and French mother. He worked across various mediums and styles and was involved in many groups from Cubism and Surrealism to Impressionism to become one of the leaders of the Dada movement. Picabia traveled to New York in 1915 where Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and gallery owner, exhibited his works. He was instrumental to popularizing the art of the European Avant-garde in the United States. His work was inspired by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte and others.
While living in the South of France during the World War II, he created paintings of nude female images. It was a new aesthetic direction which he copied from commercial illustrations. Some of them, such as La brune et la blonde, make reference to the tradition of the classical nude in painters like Courbet and Ingres.
Picabia’s famously said: “If you want to have clean ideas, change them like shirts”. His career as a whole challenges familiar narratives of the Avant-garde. It seems like an interesting exhibition to turn up at.