Francis PICABIA (1879–1953) - Lot 8

Lot n° 8
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15000 - 25000 EUR
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Result : 37 700EUR
Francis PICABIA (1879–1953) - Lot 8
Francis PICABIA (1879–1953) Nude from Behind Charcoal, stump, and pencil on paper. Signed lower right. 39.5 x 25 cm (viewing dimensions) Our drawing could be classified as a form of academic realism. But the languid and enigmatic pose, along with the hidden face, introduce an eroticism characteristic of Picabia’s work from the 1940s, placing the viewer in the position of a voyeur. One admires the astonishing mastery of the craft, the softened contours, and the powdery quality of the shadows In June 1940, fleeing the German occupation, Francis Picabia settled in Golfe-Juan with Olga Mohler and married her. Since 1938 and a psychologically and artistically difficult end to the decade (marked by abstract or neo-Dadaist hesitations), Picabia renewed his inspiration by pastiching or nearly reproducing photographs from newspaper covers: actresses or starlets, suggestive nudes from glamour magazines (Paris Magazine, Paris Sex Appeal, Voici Paris), heroes or heroines in naive poses or erotic situations. Some female portraits were literally painted from photographs of contemporary stars (Greta Garbo, Danielle Darrieux, Viviane Romance). Historians now see in the stereotypical nature of the faces, in the artificiality of the scenes, a boldness that is hardly surprising in one of the inventors of Dada—a denunciation of the artificial and the superficial, an early critique of “the society of the spectacle .” Beyond the themes, the compositions (bird’s-eye view, diagonal, dynamic, bold cropping) are inspired by those of the interwar photographic avant-garde championed by the “Nouvelle Vision” movement. Chronologically, our drawing can be linked to Francis Picabia’s *Five Women*, circa 1940 (oil on paper mounted on canvas), which appeared on the cover of the exhibition catalog *Fleur de Chair, Fleur d’Ame*, Houser and Wirth, 1997
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