Painter: Picabia. Francis. Part 1

Abstract Composition


Abstract Composition (Composition abstraite)


Balance


Bank at Poissy (Bords de l'eau à Poissy)


Francis Picabia (Clic here Wiki) (born François Marie Martinez Picabia, 22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a French painter and poet.

Biography

Francis Picabia was born in Paris of a French mother and a Spanish-Cuban father who was an attaché at the Cuban legation in Paris. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was seven. His father was of aristocratic Spanish descent.^[1] Financially independent, Picabia studied under Fernand Cormon and others at the École des Arts Decoratifs in the late 1890s. In 1894, Picabia financed his stamp collection by copying a collection of Spanish paintings that belonged to his father, switching the originals for the copies, without his father's knowledge, and selling the originals.^[1] Fernand Cormon took him into his academy at 104 boulevard de Clichy, where Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec had also studied. From the age of 20, he lived by painting; he subsequently inherited money from his mother.

In the beginning of his career, from 1903 to 1908, he was influenced by the Impressionist paintings of Alfred Sisley. Little churches, lanes, roofs of Paris, riverbanks, wash houses, lanes, barges—these were his subject matter. Some however, began to question his sincerity and said he copied Sisley, or that his cathedrals looked like Monet, or that he painted like Signac.^[2] From 1909, he came under the influence of the cubists and the Golden Section (Section d'Or). The same year, he married Gabrielle Buffet.

Around 1911 he joined the Puteaux Group, which met at the studio of Jacques Villon in the village of Puteaux. There he became friends with artist Marcel Duchamp and close friends with Guillaume Apollinaire. Other group members included Albert Gleizes, Roger de La Fresnaye, Fernand Léger and Jean Metzinger.

In 1913 Picabia was the only member of the Cubist group to personally attend the Armory Show, and Alfred Stieglitz gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery 291. From 1913 to 1915 Picabia traveled to New York City several times and took active part in the avant-garde movements, introducing modern art to America. When he landed in New York in the June of 1915, though it was meant to be a simple port of call en route to Cuba to buy molasses for a friend of his—the director of a sugar refinery—the city snapped him up and the stay became prolonged. The magazine '291' devoted an entire issue to him, he met Man Ray, Gabrielle joined him, Duchamp joined him, drugs and alcohol became a problem and his health suffered. He suffered from dropsy and tachycardia. New York ate him up.^[3] These years can be characterized as Picabia's proto-Dada period, consisting mainly of his portraits mécaniques.

Later, in 1916, while in Barcelona and within a small circle of refugee artists that included Marie Laurencin and Robert and Sonia Delaunay, he started his well-known Dada periodical 391, modeled on Stieglitz's own periodical. He continued the periodical with the help of Duchamp in America. In Zurich, seeking treatment for depression and suicidal impulses, he had met Tristan Tzara, whose radical ideas thrilled Picabia. Back in Paris, and now with his mistress Germaine Everling, he was in the city of "les assises dada" where Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon met at Certa, a basque bar in the passage de l'Opera. Picabia, the provocateur, was back home.

Picabia continued his involvement in the Dada movement through 1919 in Zürich and Paris, before breaking away from it after developing an interest in Surrealist art. (See Cannibale, 1921.) He denounced Dada in 1921, and issued a personal attack against Breton in the final issue of 391, in 1924.

The same year, he put in an appearance in the René Clair surrealist film Entr'acte, firing a cannon from a rooftop. The film served as an intermission piece for Picabia's avant-garde ballet, Relâche, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, with music by Erik Satie.

In 1925, he returned to figurative painting, and during the 1930s became a close friend of Gertrude Stein. In the early 1940s he moved to the south of France, where his work took a surprising turn: he produced a series of paintings based on the nude glamour photos in French "girlie" magazines like Paris Sex-Appeal, in a garish style which appears to subvert traditional, academic nude painting. Some of these went to an Algerian merchant who sold them on, and so Picabia came to decorate brothels across North Africa under the Occupation.

Before the end of World War II, he returned to Paris where he resumed abstract painting and writing poetry. A large retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris in the spring of 1949. Francis Picabia died in Paris in 1953 and was interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre.

In 2003 a single Picabia painting once owned by Andre Breton sold for $1.6 million.^[4]

Barcelone

Francis-Marie Martínez Picabia (clic aquí Wiki) (22 de enero, 1879 - 30 de noviembre, 1953) Pintor francés.

Artista vanguardista francés, nacido en París el 22 de enero de 1879, pero de origen cubano. Trabajó en casi todos los estilos contemporáneos más destacados, como el impresionismo, el cubismo, el fauvismo, el orfismo, el dadaísmo, el surrealismo y el arte abstracto. Hizo también pintura figurativa, dibujo y collage. Estudió en École des Beaux-Arts y en la École des Arts Décoratifs. Recibió una fuerte influencia impresionista y fauve, en especial de la obra de Pissarro y Sisley. De 1909 a 1911 estuvo vinculado al cubismo y fue miembro del grupo de Puteaux, donde conoció a los hermanos Duchamp. En 1913 viajó a Estados Unidos, donde entró en contacto con el fotógrafo Alfred Stieglitz y el grupo dadá americano. En Barcelona, publicó el primer número de su revista dadaísta "291" (1916) contando con colaboradores como Apollinaire, Tzara, Man Ray y Arp. Tras pasar una etapa en la Costa Azul con una fuerte presencia surrealista en su obra, regresa a París y crea junto a André Breton la revista "391". Estudió en la Escuela de Artes Decorativas de París, influido por el postimpresionismo. En 1911 conoció a los hermanos Duchamp (Marcel, Jacques y Raymond) en el suburbio parisino de Puteaux, donde se reunían los domingos para discutir sobre arte, matemáticas y otros temas. En 1913 viajó a Nueva York con motivo de la exposición “The Internacional Exhibition of Modern Art”, celebrada en un cuartel militar, y desde donde se pretendía dar a conocer al público norteamericano la obra de la vanguardia europea, ya mínimamente introducida por el fotógrafo y galerista Alfred Stieglitz. Picabia vivió en Nueva York hasta 1916, fecha en que viajó a Barcelona, donde estuvo dos años.

Allí apenas mantuvo contacto con la vanguardia catalana, salvo con Josep Dalmau, quien editó la revista 391, fundada por Picabia en 1917. El formato, la concepción y la tipografía deben mucho a la revista 291, editada por Stieglitz y en la que colaboró Picabia, pero los presupuestos son otros: el tono nihilista, frío, irónico y destructor son propiamente dadaístas. La revista se publicó entre 1917 y 1924, en Barcelona, Nueva York, Zurich y París, y en ella colaboraron, entre otros, Marcel Duchamp, Tritan Tzara, Man Ray y Jean Cocteau. Junto a la revista Dada, fue la más importante de este movimiento. Poco después de 1917, Picabia viajó a París, donde entró de lleno en el círculo dadaísta conducido por Tristan Tzara, participando en manifestaciones y otros escándalos. En 1922 Dalmau organizó una exposición que reunió 46 obras de Picabia, con un catálogo editado por André Breton.

Las obras anteriores a 1922 podrían calificarse como mecanomorfas, que mucho deben al dinamismo futurista. "El apuro" (1914, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) pertenece a un conjunto de obras realizadas por el artista en 1914, que podrían definirse como transposiciones abstractas de experiencias íntimas. En torno a 1924 parece regresar a la figuración, sobre todo a partir de la fundación del grupo surrealista: en estas obras parece burlarse de ese onirismo surreal, pintando figuras desmaterializadas, y más adelante iniciará un diálogo con la tradición artística. Su interés por la literatura y el lenguaje fue particularmente evidente en sus últimos trabajos. En 1930 se celebró la primera de las grandes retrospectivas sobre Picabia en la galería francesa Rosenberg, donde se mostró la obra comprendida entre 1900 y 1930.