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拍品專文
Picabia's portrait of a young woman, shows the sitter in a state of contemplation, her wistful eyes looking away as she holds her head in her hand. The combination of flickering warm light and rosy cheeks suggest that she is warming herself by a fire, not visible to the viewer, situated below the painting's edges.
This work forms part of a series of female portraits undertaken by Francis Picabia at the start of the 1940s, which although stylistically naturalistic, also often contained elements which evoked the illustrations of Pulp magazines, toying with notions of kitsch and mass media through the fine art medium of oil paintings. Much of his source material for this series was derived from photographs sourced in magazines, publicity material or postcards. A certain irreverence towards the classical canons of beauty, whilst snubbing current artistic sensibilities, became the controversial hallmark of Picabia’s style. This unique and radical approach which called into question the very definitions of ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ would nonetheless have important repercussions on the art of the 20th Century, in particular paving the way for the Pop art movement.
This work forms part of a series of female portraits undertaken by Francis Picabia at the start of the 1940s, which although stylistically naturalistic, also often contained elements which evoked the illustrations of Pulp magazines, toying with notions of kitsch and mass media through the fine art medium of oil paintings. Much of his source material for this series was derived from photographs sourced in magazines, publicity material or postcards. A certain irreverence towards the classical canons of beauty, whilst snubbing current artistic sensibilities, became the controversial hallmark of Picabia’s style. This unique and radical approach which called into question the very definitions of ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ would nonetheless have important repercussions on the art of the 20th Century, in particular paving the way for the Pop art movement.