Francis PICABIA (1879-1953). Portrait of a Woman - circa 1942-1943. Oil on board, signed lower right. H_43.8 cm W_35.3 cm Provenance: French private collection - given by the artist to a friend in Cannes, and passed on by descent. A certificate of authenticity from the Comité Picabia (Madame Beverley Calté), confirming the inclusion of our painting in the Catalogue raisonné of the artist's works, dated April 10, 2024, will be given to the buyer. Our painting, kept in the same family since its creation in the early 1940s, is a discovery for the art market. Impressionist, Cubist, Dadaist, Surrealist, Francis Picabia is an image of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Best known for his provocative cynicism and eccentric pictorial language, Picabia began experimenting in the 1930s and post-Dada period with figurative portraits of women, long decried for their kitsch and academic appearance. Yet art historian Arnauld Pierre explains in the catalog of the retrospective devoted to the artist in 2002 at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris the second degree that Picabia infuses into these portraits, creating a "simulacrum of painting (...) through which no authentic and direct experience of reality passes - a painting without aura". Our work fits perfectly into this dynamic. The frozen, almost false smile, the subject's distant, elusive gaze and the accentuated colors of the face imbue the viewer with a certain unease. Picabia sows doubt: portrait or caricature, testimony to the provocative spirit of his author.