79 - FRANCIS PICABIA (1879–1953)

FRANCIS PICABIA (1879–1953) The Painter and His Model, ca. 1940–1946 India ink on paper Signed lower left 27.5 x 21.5 cm - 10 7/8 x 8 1/2 in. This work is registered in the archives of the Picabia Committee under inventory number 4358. A certificate from the Picabia Committee, dated June 3, 2024, will be provided to the purchaser. India ink on paper, signed lower left Provenance - Olga Picabia Collection, France - Private collection, France (acquired from the latter) Catalog entry: “The Cuban painter continues to bestow the richness, variety, and fantasy of a painful vision of his own dreams. With each new work, he reinvents himself—yet even when he seeks to confound us, we still recognize him easily. For his profound vision eliminates nothing, and the ghosts of his Spanish women float deep within the hallucinations of his bestiary, which now seems familiar and somehow softened to us. His technique is always masterful, both in his skill as a colorist and in his highly refined mastery of drawing. But Mr. Picabia is not merely an illustrator who succeeds in capturing his most fleeting visions; at times, he is a painter whose sarcasm and bitterness cannot obscure the power of his thought. *L’Ombre* is a sober and powerful work that perhaps heralds an evolution that could take its author to great heights. For, as Pascal put it: “To mock philosophy is truly to philosophize.” “Chronicle of Parisian Life,” in The New York Herald, European Edition of the New York Herald Tribune, October 28, 1928, No. 15002, p. 6