Birth
January 22nd, 1879, Paris, France
Death
1953, Paris, France
Country of Origin/Citizenship
France/French
Kind of Artist/Cultural Worker
Poet and Artist (most prominently painting)
Avant-Garde Movements Associated With
Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Symbolism, Surrealism, and Dadaism
Date & Places of Overlap with Loy
Alongside Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia is one of the founding names in Cubism and Dada. With regards to Dada in particular, Picabia made a significant impact by not only spreading it through Zurich, Barcelona, Paris, and New York City, but also by being one of the first artists to test the limits and define Dadaism. Despite not being a household name, he was the “leading spokesperson for the avant-garde movement on American soil” (Umland).
Picabia was born in Paris on January 22nd, 1879 to Cuban-born Spaniard Francisco Vicente Martinez Picabia and French native Marie Cecile Davanne (Camfield 3). His art career began in 1895 when he studied at the École des Arts Decoratifs before enrolling at “the conservative Salon des Artistes Français” and studying for six years under Humbert, Wallet and Cormon. According to biographer William A. Camfield, “[n]ot until 1902 can one perceive . . . some impressionist influence” in Picabia’s painting (4-6).
Picabia married writer Gabrielle Buffet in 1909 (Camfield 15). Shortly after their marriage, beginning with a honeymoon visit to Spain, Picabia faced an artistic identity crisis that steered him towards the avant-garde (Camfield 17). Inspired by the Symbolist poets’ theory of correspondance—the idea that the aesthetic forms in nature correspond to “mental and emotional experiences”—Picabia turned away from water colors, landscape paintings, and derivative impressionist work to an “abstract art . . . .that dealt not with the appearance of the world but with one’s inner experience of life” (Camfield 12, 17).
In 1911, he met lifelong friend Marcel Duchamp, as the two were both involved in the organization known as the Société Normande de Peinture Moderne, “an organization which was to be of consequence for [Picabia’s] career and the history of Cubism” (Camfield 20-21). Both exhibited paintings as part of the 1912 Armory Show (Camfield 25).
Both Mina Loy and Francis Picabia were involved in the same circles, largely because both were good friends with Duchamp. They crossed paths as artists in the New York Dada movement, especially in the apartment of Louise and Walter Arensberg. Both published in The Blind Man, a Dada journal that ran briefly out of New York in 1917. Duchamp and Henri-Pierre Roché initiated the magazine, with Arensberg regulars Loy and Beatrice Wood contributing articles (Burke 230). The second issue of the magazine, “planned as a defense of Duchamp’s Fountain,” featured poetry by Picabia (Burke 231).
Picabia’s 1920 work, La Sainte Vierge, “has been seen as one of the central Dada gestures” according to David Hopkins. Hopkins compares this painting, which is simply a splash of ink on a white background, to “Duchamp’s infamous urinal of 1917,” as both works “seemingly [deal] with notions of defilement . . . linked to bodily functions.” In reading the painting (the title of which translates to “The Blessed Virgin”) as a crude “visual pun” about the implausibility of Mary’s virginal status, Hopkins sees the painting as a representatively “blasphemous and anti-art” Dada work (317-18).
Picabia’s art career, which lasted around 50 years, was “marked by a consistent inconsistency” (Dupêcher). Because he often struggled with his own identity and beliefs, it showed in his art, which is why he dabbled in so many different art forms through various passages of his life. After suffering a stroke in 1951 from which he would not recover, Picabia died in Paris in 1953 (Camfield 277).
Related
Works Cited
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Harper Collins, 1996.
Camfield, William A. Francis Picabia, Princeton University Press, 1979.
Dupêcher, Natalie. “Francis Picabia.” The Museum of Modern Art, 2016, www.moma.org/artists/4607.
Hopkins, David. “Questioning Dada’s Potency: Picabia’s ‘La Sainte Vierge’ and the Dialogue with Duchamp.” Art History, vol. 15, no. 3, Sep. 1992, 317-333. Academic Search Elite, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=7053300&site=ehost-live.
Umland, Anne, director. How to See the Artist: Francis Picabia. Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, 20 Jan. 2017, www.moma.org/artists/4607.
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