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Femme sur Fond Vert
Details
FRANCIS PICABIA (1879-1953)
Femme sur Fond Vert
signed 'Francis Picabia' (lower left)
oil on panel
41½ x 30 in. (105.5 x 76 cm.)
Painted in 1938.
Femme sur Fond Vert
signed 'Francis Picabia' (lower left)
oil on panel
41½ x 30 in. (105.5 x 76 cm.)
Painted in 1938.
Provenance
The Estate of Olga Mohler, Paris
Cometé Picabia, Paris
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Cometé Picabia, Paris
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
Exhibited
Tokyo, Isetan Museum; Fukishima, Iwaki City Art Museum; Osaka, Kintetsu Museum of Art, Francis Picabia, August 1999-February 2000, no. 51 (illustrated).
New York, Jack Shainman Gallery, Francis Picabia, October-November 2003.
Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Private View 1980-2000: Collection Pierre Huber, June-September 2005, p. 3 (illustrated).
New York, Jack Shainman Gallery, Francis Picabia, October-November 2003.
Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Private View 1980-2000: Collection Pierre Huber, June-September 2005, p. 3 (illustrated).
Further details
During the 1930s, Francis Picabia -- the legendary progenitor of that most audacious "anti-art" movement, dada -- began a series of paintings perhaps even more daring than their Dadaist antecedents. These were the Paris Nudes, a series of sexed-up female nudes, heady with eroticism to the point of near-dizziness. Alienated by the Dadaists and the Surrealists alike, Picabia created this series in a kind of painterly no-man's-land in which he was able to break free from the "isms" that had defined him just a decade earlier.
Citing Botticelli or Velazquez as inspiration while simultaneously culling images from contemporary fashion photography, Picabia's return to rendering the female nude was seen as heretical, especially during the tenuous pre-war months of 1939-40. Artists of any seriousness would never consider the possibility of rendering a nude, which is perhaps why Picabia did so. Femme sur fond vert is a rather traditional portrait made by a completely un-traditional painter. It is darkly erotic, almost maudlin in tone. It shares affinities with photographic portraits, as evidenced by the monochromatic, photo-studio green background, but also speaks to the anxiety and alienation of the pending war era.
In letters to Gertrude Stein and Germaine Everling, Picabia writes of a near-crippling nervousness that no doubt informed most of his work: "I find it absolutely impossible to work. Every day I feel more depressed: I hardly have the heart to get up in the morning if we get out of all this destruction alive, how delighted I would be to sit beside you on your beautiful terrace! There are moments when I wonder if we shall ever see each other again."
Miraculously, despite such bouts of extreme despair and anxiety, Picabia was able to produce a series of remarkable originality and with a prototypical post-modern sensibility. He spent most of his time in the south of France, in the Cote d'Azur off the coast of Cannes aboard his yacht, the Horizon II, and there showed his paintings in a handful of regional galleries. On the one hand, his life was a glittery one, soaking up the sun by day and playing in the casinos by night. His mistress, Olga Mohler, who had been initially hired to be the nanny of his children, had recently been given the Horizon II as her private living quarters.
Like Pablo Picasso's arresting protraits of his various lovers, Picabia did a number of paintings of Olga, and the present work captures her youthful allure and mysterious position. Picabia would marry Olga on June 14, 1940, a date that would live in infamy for any Frenchman -- the day the Germans invaded Paris. The portrait, then, might be seen as a last look at the artist's decadent life, a kind of final hurrah in the face of mounting world war.
Picabia's late works have now seen an influence on many of today's young artists such as John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage, who have appropriated the eroticism of 1940's periodical portraiture and created a hybrid of the early aesthetic of today's loosely and moral attitudes towards sex. Other artists, such as Elizabeth Peyton and Karen Kilimnick, paralleled pop culture photographic simulacra seen in the Paris Nudes. More so than in his early works, Picabia has found a common ground in today's contemporary aesthetic by way of playing on the magnetic allure of media in society. Unwittingly, Picabia's late works prefigure the strategies of many contemporary painters working in the 1990s, making him a cult hero for those artists eager to reenergize portraiture.
Citing Botticelli or Velazquez as inspiration while simultaneously culling images from contemporary fashion photography, Picabia's return to rendering the female nude was seen as heretical, especially during the tenuous pre-war months of 1939-40. Artists of any seriousness would never consider the possibility of rendering a nude, which is perhaps why Picabia did so. Femme sur fond vert is a rather traditional portrait made by a completely un-traditional painter. It is darkly erotic, almost maudlin in tone. It shares affinities with photographic portraits, as evidenced by the monochromatic, photo-studio green background, but also speaks to the anxiety and alienation of the pending war era.
In letters to Gertrude Stein and Germaine Everling, Picabia writes of a near-crippling nervousness that no doubt informed most of his work: "I find it absolutely impossible to work. Every day I feel more depressed: I hardly have the heart to get up in the morning if we get out of all this destruction alive, how delighted I would be to sit beside you on your beautiful terrace! There are moments when I wonder if we shall ever see each other again."
Miraculously, despite such bouts of extreme despair and anxiety, Picabia was able to produce a series of remarkable originality and with a prototypical post-modern sensibility. He spent most of his time in the south of France, in the Cote d'Azur off the coast of Cannes aboard his yacht, the Horizon II, and there showed his paintings in a handful of regional galleries. On the one hand, his life was a glittery one, soaking up the sun by day and playing in the casinos by night. His mistress, Olga Mohler, who had been initially hired to be the nanny of his children, had recently been given the Horizon II as her private living quarters.
Like Pablo Picasso's arresting protraits of his various lovers, Picabia did a number of paintings of Olga, and the present work captures her youthful allure and mysterious position. Picabia would marry Olga on June 14, 1940, a date that would live in infamy for any Frenchman -- the day the Germans invaded Paris. The portrait, then, might be seen as a last look at the artist's decadent life, a kind of final hurrah in the face of mounting world war.
Picabia's late works have now seen an influence on many of today's young artists such as John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage, who have appropriated the eroticism of 1940's periodical portraiture and created a hybrid of the early aesthetic of today's loosely and moral attitudes towards sex. Other artists, such as Elizabeth Peyton and Karen Kilimnick, paralleled pop culture photographic simulacra seen in the Paris Nudes. More so than in his early works, Picabia has found a common ground in today's contemporary aesthetic by way of playing on the magnetic allure of media in society. Unwittingly, Picabia's late works prefigure the strategies of many contemporary painters working in the 1990s, making him a cult hero for those artists eager to reenergize portraiture.