Francis Picabia, 1879-1953
By Valerie Kniazeva
Atrata, from Transparency series, 1929, oil and pencil on panel
One of the most inventive and free artists, Francis Picabia was born in Paris in 1879, and lived out a diverse career in which he jumped between different artistic mediums and art styles. Born into a comfortable household, Picabia was able to study in one of the most prestigious art schools at the time, L’Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, and was introduced to the art world at a young age. His early life saw many changes to his family, starting with the passing of his mother and grandmother when he was seven years old. Picabia grew up with his father, uncle and maternal grandfather, all busy men of high status, in a home referred to as “quatre sans femmes”, or “four without women”. His uncle admired the arts and his grandfather explored photography, setting up Picabia to take more interest in style. It would, though, only be through his own experimentation and exploration that he worked and developed a distinctive art practice with a long-lasting legacy.
While some know him as the father of the Dada movement, Picabia let his emotions guide the turns of his art and he explored more than five distinctly different movements over the course of his career. Starting as a sort of Impressionist painter in 1905 during his first exhibition, he subsequently experimented with Fauvism, Cubism, and a commitment to abstraction. The artist’s transformations were mirrored in his personal life. Falling victim to the First World War, Picabia fled Paris, moving through Europe, America, and even the Caribbean, all while facing troubles and changes of heart in his multiple marriages. This period also saw Picabia take a break from painting, seeking refuge instead in poetry and critiques as he recuperated from his state of chronic depression.
Constantly on the hunt to find something which would truly express what he sought to show the world, it was only beginning in 1928 that Picabia was satisfied by reaching a closeness to this inner image through his Transparency series. Utilising the early encounters made possible by his art-loving uncle with classics of the European art historical canon such as Botticelli and combining all that he had learned through his tango with different art styles, Picabia turned to painting to create the works. Using overlapping images of people, fruit, and animals, he explores abstraction and combines the old, present, and future to create a unique image which truly speaks a thousand words.
Francis Picabia once said, “What I like is to invent, to imagine myself as at every moment a new man, and then, to forget him, forget everything”. Throughout his career of nearly 50 years, the artist was many different people, people who perhaps never even truly expressed a combined vision of his ideals and identity. Yet, it is through this wild and anarchic spirit that his legacy lives on, as he continues to inspire artists today, seventy-one years after his death in 1953.
Bibliography
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"HOW TO SEE | Francis Picabia." MoMA. YouTube. January 20, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU0EYA2d4_0.
"Understanding Picabia's Mystic Vision of Enigmatic Beauty." Sothebys.com. Last modified February 8, 2019. Accessed 22 January 2024. https://www.sothebys.com/en/slideshows/anatomy-of-an-artwork-francis-picabias-atrata.