FRANCIS PICABIA

France, 1879 – 1953

A universe populated by his characters – archetypes – the woman, the star, the bird, the female sex. Miró’s graphics acquire such a personal stamp that it is impossible not to identify them. Francis Picabia, born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953, was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographer of Spanish descent.

Beginning his early career as an impressionist and figurative painter, he later experimented with other avant-garde movements, often maintaining a sense of the absurd or the disturbing. It is perhaps most interesting to view Picabia’s work in the light of the many and varied artistic movements to which he was exposed, and with which he maintained a significant and dynamic relationship.

The essence of an oeuvre whose main axis was the questioning of the figure in the exaltation or elimination of the figure. The abrupt artistic and stylistic changes that constitute the essence of Picabia’s creative curiosity express, in addition to his passion for painting and the image, his fear of disappearance.G