Artist: Francis Picabia (Paris, 1879 - id., 1953)Title: Two FiguresMeasures: 20x24 inchesTechnique:Watercolor on paperProvenance: Private CollectionBiography:The French artist Francis Picabia stood out on the art scene at the beginning of the 20th century for his freedom of spirit and his great versatility to change his style according to his own impulses. His nonconformity led him to relate to the Dada movement and to contribute decisively to the spread of this current in Spain, France and the United States.He attended classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and his early works, close to those of Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, soon received wide recognition. However, Picabia would not take long to abandon the post-impressionist style to approach avant-garde art in 1912 through Orphism. Around that time he also became friends with Marcel Duchamp.In 1912 he exhibited his work at the Section d'Or and a year later at the Armory Show in New York. After the outbreak of the First World War, he would settle in the city of skyscrapers, where he met Duchamp again and met Alfred Stieglitz, with whom he collaborated on the magazine 291. In 1916 he lived for a time in Barcelona, where he founded the magazine 391, in which he would publish an anthology of his poems, considered the precedent of automatic writing and of great importance for the development of the Dada movement in France. A trip to Switzerland for health reasons allowed him to come into contact with Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp. In 1919 he settled again in Paris; there he collaborated in the creation of the Dada group in Paris and met André Breton, who would defend him in the numerous scandals caused by his publications.After his break in 1921 with the Dadaist group, he participated in the staging of the ballet Relâche, with music by Erik Satie, and wrote the plot for the film Entr'acte by René Clair. Fed up with the Parisian artistic environment, in 1925 he bought a house in Mougins, near Cannes, at which time he began his Monsters series. At the end of his life, back in Paris after the end of World War II, he felt attracted to abstract painting, becoming one of the forerunners of art informel.

Very good condition