Attributed to Francis Picabia, no coa, private collection, medium: pastel, measurements: 19"WX23"H framed, good/ok condition Biography: Francis Picabia was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typographist closely associated with Dada. When considering the many styles that Picabia painted in, observers have described his career as "shape-shifting" or "kaleidoscopic". During the late 1890s, Picabia began to study art under Fernand Cormon and others at École des Arts Decoratifs, Cormon's academy at 104 boulevard de Clichy, where Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec had also studied. He studied under Fernand Cormon, Ferdinand Humbert, and Albert Charles Wallet for two years.From the age of twenty, Picabia lived by painting. Subsequently, he inherited money from his mother, leaving him far wealthier than most of his contemporaries in the art world. He began buying at least one new sports car each year, and ultimately owned 127 over the course of his life.Early in his career, from 1903 to 1908, Picabia was influenced by the Impressionist paintings of Alfred Sisley. His subject matter included small churches, lanes, roofs of Paris, riverbanks, wash houses, and barges. This led critics to question his originality, saying that he copied Sisley, that his cathedrals looked like Monet cathedrals, or that he painted like Signac. He soon came to feel he was working in an outdated style and began to look for a new approach.