Artist: Francis PicabiaTechnique: oil on canvasMeasure: 50 x 40 cm The PortraitFrancis-Marie Martínez Picabia. French painter of Hispanic-Cuban origin and known in the history of the plastic arts as Francis Picabia. His painting is very varied, with constant changes in subject matter and style, although inside, almost always, the world of the imaginary and the symbolic. The ideas that he proclaimed from his publications contributed to the diffusion of the vanguards.He was born in Paris on January 22, 1879, but of Cuban origin. The only son of a Spanish born Cuban, Francisco Vicente Martínez Picabia, and the French Marie Cécile Davanne, a marriage of the Spanish aristocracy and the French bourgeoisie.He studied at the School of Fine Arts and the School of Decorative Arts. He received a strong impressionist and fauve influence, especially from the work of Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.Artistic trajectoryHe began his artistic career in the field of Impressionism and Fauvism, with works marked by a simplicity that gave him great commercial success. However, his restless temperament led him to seek more committed paths, so he entered the orbit of Cubism with works characterized by the incorporation of symbolic elements and titles and phrases without any relation to the subject.He worked in almost all contemporary styles (Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Orphism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Abstract Art.) He also made figurative paintings, drawings and collages.From 1909 to 1911 he was linked to Cubism and was a member of the Puteaux Group, where he met the Duchamp brothers (Marcel, Jacques and Raymond).In 1913 he traveled to the United States, where he came into contact with photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the American Dada group. In Barcelona, he published the first issue of his Dadaist magazine "291" (1916) with collaborators such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray and Jean Arp. After spending a stage in the Costa Azul with a strong surrealist presence in his work, he returns to Paris and creates together with André Breton the magazine "391". The magazine was published between 1917 and 1924, in Barcelona, New York, Zurich and Paris, and in it they collaborated, among others, Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. Along with Dadá magazine, it was the most important of this movement.Shortly after 1917, Picabia traveled to Paris, where he entered fully into the Dadaist circle led by Tristan Tzara, participating in the demonstrations and other scandals of the group. His contacts with Marcel Duchamp in New York, where he was on several occasions during the decade of 1910, and with the Dadaist group of Zurich, led him to opt for Dadaism as a preferred artistic trend. This period corresponds to its most characteristic style, called machinist for focusing on the representation of machines, which are sometimes symbols of human beings and which refer to the myth of machinism, industrial development at any cost.DeathHe died on November 30, 1953, in Paris, France, at 74 years of age and leaving a work marked by the Dadaist, cubist and surrealist imprint.About his workWorks prior to 1922 could be described as mechanomorphic, which owes a lot to futuristic dynamism. The hurry, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, belongs to a set of works made by the artist in 1914, which could be defined as abstract transpositions of intimate experiences.Towards 1924 it seems to return to the figuration, mainly from the foundation of the surrealist group. In the works of this period he seems to mock the "surreal onirism", painting dematerialized figures.Later on, he will initiate a dialogue with the artistic tradition. His interest in literature and language was particularly evident in his later works.In 1922 he organized an exhibition that brought together forty-six works by Picabia, with a catalog edited by André Breton and in 1930 the first of the great retrospectives on Picabia was held at the French gallery Rosenberg, where the work made by the painter between the years 1900 and 1930.

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