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Francis Picabia
(1879-1953)
Francis Picabia was born in Paris in 1879 into a family of mixed parentage, French mother and Spanish father. He studied at the ¨¦cole des Beaux-Arts and at the ¨¦cole des Arts d¨¦coratifs of Paris. Up to 1908 he painted landscapes in the manner of Corot and the Impressionists, especially Sisley (Landscape/Paysage, Riverbank / Rivi¨¨re, Bank at Poissy / Bords de l'eau ¨¤ Poissy.)
Then, influenced by Matisse's Fauvism on one hand, and by Cubism of Braque and Picasso on the other, he tried to combine both movements and created bright-colored Cubists pictures unlike the somber monotone paintings of Cubism founders. (Young Girl/Jeune fille, Star Dancer on a Transatlantic Cruise / Danseuse ¨¦toile sur un transatlantique)
In 1910 Pucabia met the Duchamps brothers, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, and Guillaume Apollinaire. The friendship with Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), a pioneer in the use of ready-made art, and G. Apollinaire, an Avant-garde poet and critic, significantly influenced Picabia's following works. In 1913, Picabia went to the United States for the first time and showed his abstract paintings at the international exhibition "Armory Show." The pictures had success and brought him fame.
During his second stay in NY in 1915, together with Marcel Duchamp and painters of American Avant-garde, they formed the NY society of Dadaists. The group published the periodical 291, to which Picabia contributed. On January 25th, 1917, Picabia published the first number of his periodical, which he called 391 to remind of the American group's 291. In 391 he published his first "Mechanical Drawings". Leaving away the geometrical abstractions, Picabia started a series of compositions, in which colored copies of technical drawings suddenly obtained shapes of human figures (Ici, C'est Ici Stieglitz. 1915; Young American Girl in a State of Nudity, 1915; Parade Amoureuse, 1917). These "mechanomorphs" full of humor, teasing Dadaist sarcasm, demonstrate the paradox of visual perception, which could find a mimesis image in an abstract technical drawing. In the same year he went to the USA once more and there published further numbers of his periodical, assisted by Marcel Duchamp. In Europe 391 was published until 1924.
In 1918 Picabia moved to Switzerland, where he joined the Zurich group of Dadaists and published a book entitled "Po¨¨mes et dessins de la fille n¨¦e sans m¨¨re" ("Poems and Drawings of the Girl Born without a Mother"). He took active part in the activities of the group and went on with his "mechanomorphs" (Infant Carburettor, 1919). He contributed to "Dada" issues. In 1920 he published a periodical, "Cannibale", and in 1921, together with Breton and others, he dissociated himself from "orthodox" Dadaists and switc.... |
