Signed and dated lower right: Picabia 1908
Provenance:
Galerie Spiess, Paris
Private Collection, Canada
Acquired by the previous owner in Paris in the 1980s
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Picabia.
The present work demonstrates an interesting and phase of transition in Picabia’s production. The year 1908 represents the full realization of Picabia’s neo-impressionist mode and the subsequent integration of fauvist and cubist methods. Still life in the garden is an example of his neo-impressionism at its most pure phase: forms are expressed with lively, wet brushwork, thick impasto, and vibrant color. In the foreground a porcelain dish filled with fresh peaches sits upon a tabletop. An empty wine bottle and a short glass with a residue of red wine sit next to it, and a tea cup is placed at the edge of the table, only half-visible within the confines of the composition. Brilliant sunlight fills the scene, which is set in a courtyard as is evident from a shaded, blue doorway at left and the colorful vines climbing up a windowsill at right. The image is painted in thick swirls of yellow, orange and sky blue that add to the impression of a shimmering summer afternoon.
Francis Picabia was born François Marie Martinez Picabia in Paris, 1879, of a Spanish father and a French mother. He was enrolled at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1895 to 1897 and later studied with Fernand Cormon, Ferdinand Humbert, and Albert Charles Wallet. Picabia was also advised by Camille Pissarro and he began to paint in an Impressionist manner in the winter of 1902–03. He exhibited works in this style at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants of 1903. His first solo show was held at the Galerie Haussmann, Paris, in 1905. From 1908, elements of Fauvism and Neo-Impressionism as well as Cubism and other forms of abstraction appeared in his painting, and by 1912 he had evolved a personal amalgam of Cubism and Fauvism. Picabia worked in an abstract mode from this period until the early 1920s.
Picabia became a friend of Guillaume Apollinaire and Marcel Duchamp and associated with the Puteaux group in 1911 and 1912. The Puteaux group was an offshoot of Cubism who held an interest in Euclidean theories on proportion and advocated a mélange of modern tendencies, in particular combining cubism with the color of fauvism and the lyrical subjects of post-impressionism. Picabia participated in the 1913 Armory Show, visiting New York on this occasion and frequenting avant-garde circles. Alfred Stieglitz gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery “291” that same year. In 1915, which marked the beginning of Picabia’s machinist or mechanomorphic period, he and Duchamp, among others, instigated and participated in Dada manifestations in New York. Picabia lived in Barcelona in 1916 and 1917. In 1917, he published his first volume of poetry and the first issues of 391, his magazine modeled after Stieglitz’s periodical 291. For the next few years, Picabia remained involved with the Dadaists in Zurich and Paris, creating scandals at the Salon d’Automne, but finally denounced Dada in 1921 for no longer being “new.” The following year, he moved to Tremblay-sur-Mauldre outside Paris, and returned to figurative art. In 1924, he attacked André Breton and the Surrealists in 391.
Picabia moved to Mougins in 1925. During the 1930s, he became a close friend of Gertrude Stein. By the end of World War II, Picabia returned to Paris. He resumed painting in an abstract style and writing poetry. In March 1949, a retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris. Picabia died November 30, 1953, in Paris.
Selected Museum Collections:
Musée Picasso, Antibes; Musée départemental de l’Oise, Beauvais; Musée d’Art Moderne, Brussels; Art Institute of Chicago; Hauser and Wirth Collection, Henau, Switzerland; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Lisieux; Royal Academy of Arts and Tate Gallery, London; Musée Cantini, Marseille; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Musée d’Orsay, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg; Musée Greuze, Tournus; Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C;
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