This piece titled Eleonor, was exhibited in ART AVENUE GALLERIES in Sarasota for seven years. It comes with all provenance and literature.In 1922, Francis Picabia wrote, If you want to have clean ideas, change them like shirts. Throughout his audacious and inventive career, which spanned almost 50 years and encompassed painting, performance, poetry, publishing, and film, Picabia lived out that prescription. Although he remains best known as a Dadaist, his work ranged from Impressionist painting to radical abstraction, from iconoclastic provocation to pseudo-classicism, and from photo-based painting to Art Informel. He relished courting controversy, making regular engagements with the press a part of the construction of his artistic persona.This piece has many elements of the classic face features, nose, wide intense eyes. Notice the coral snake moving around the backside with a cat head. Sunflowers add a little nuance to the backdrop, and the risque velvet red dress with skimpy shoulder straps, must have been an eye browser for 1951 audiences.

fair, aging on the back of canvas

21 x 13 x 1 in

2 lb