Lot n° 44
Estimation :
300000 - 400000
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 270 000EUR
Francis PICABIA (1879-1953)
Love and Woman, 1935.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated lower left.
Handwritten "L'amour et la femme" and numbered "15" on the stretcher on the back.
92 x 73 cm.
Small cracks, minor restoration and minor edge loss.
Provenance :
Suzanne Romain Collection.
Collection of Mr. L.
Then by descent.
Exhibition:
Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, Paintings by Francis Picabia, January 3 - 25, 1936, n°15.
Francis Picabia, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, January 23 - March 29, 1976, no. 204.
Bibliography :
Mohler Olga, Francis Picabia. L'Album d'Olga Mohler, Editions Notizie, Turin, 1975, reproduced in part on p. 91.
Collectif, Francis Picabia, Exhibition catalog, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, January-March 1976, Paris - Centre Georges Pompidou - 1976, reproduced p. 162.
Arnauld P., Camfield W., Candace C., Calte B., Francis Picabia, Catalogue raisonné, volume III, (1927-1939), Mercatorfonds, Brussels, 2019, reproduced and described on pages 93, 97, 319, 321 and 341 under n°1324 and 1376.
Our painting is part of an ensemble of some twenty canvases created especially for The Arts Clubs of Chicago's exhibition
Chicago, Paintings by Francis Picabia, January 3-25, 1936. The preparation of the latter is well documented thanks to photographs taken during the summer of 1935, in the artist's studio at Château du Mai, by Olga Mohler (1905-2002), Picabia's companion and future wife.
L'Amour et la femme was selected to illustrate the cover of the exhibition catalog under the American title "Love and the Woman".
Woman". In his new style, Picabia drew inspiration from the old and primitive masters, particularly Italian.
"The melancholy figures are decontextualized, detached from any explanatory narrative; starting from an engraving reproduction of a Pompeian fresco in which Venus holds the dying Adonis, the artist has replaced the body of the young hunter with a rocky outcrop (...).
In her memoirs, Olga Mohler asserts that Picabia destroyed these paintings on their return from Chicago, in other words, that he painted over them, a reaction sometimes explained by the disappointing reception of his exhibition. However, this assertion needs to be qualified. In mid-1936, Picabia was still unaware of the results of the exhibition, and so must not have seen the return of unsold works until much later, when (...) he had already changed direction. (...).
The artist's treatment of the paintings returned from Chicago a little after July is quite different, though related to this work." In fact, he was working on his transparencies at the time, modifying the compositions to a greater or lesser extent depending on the painting.
"Many if not most of the Chicago paintings underwent transformations (...), when they were not simply destroyed, as Olga Mohler claims, no doubt at the very moment when Picabia was defining a new balance between reinforced three-dimensional illusionism, and reduced chromatic range. (...)".
As for L'Amour et la femme, it doesn't seem to have undergone any major changes. Picabia simply added translucent bluish shadows, darkened and cooled his palette.
Source:
Arnauld P., Camfield W., Candace C., Calte B., Francis Picabia, Catalogue raisonné, volume III, (1927-1939), Mercatorfonds,
Brussels, 2019.
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