PICABIA, FRANCIS


Meaning of PICABIA, FRANCIS in English

born , Jan. 22, 1879, Paris, Fr. died Nov. 30, 1953, Paris French painter, illustrator, designer, writer, and editor who was successively involved with the Cubist, Dadaist, and Surrealist movements. Picabia was the son of a Cuban diplomat and a Frenchwoman. After studying at the cole des Beaux-Arts and the cole des Arts Dcoratifs, he painted for nearly six years in an Impressionist mode akin to that of Alfred Sisley. In 1909 he adopted a Cubist style, and, along with Marcel Duchamp, he helped found the (Cubist) Section d'Or group of artists in 1911. Picabia went on to combine the Cubist style with Orphic elements in such paintings as I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie (191314) and Edtaonisl (1913), to which he gave proto-Dadaist names. These early paintings are richly coloured assemblages of closely fitted, highly polished, metallic-looking shapes. As Picabia moved away from Cubism to Orphism, his colours and shapes became softer until, about 1916, he began to paint the satiric, machinelike contrivances that are his chief contribution to Dadaism. The drawing Universal Prostitution (191619) and the painting Amorous Procession (1917) are typical of his Dadaist phase. In 1915 in New York City, Picabia, Duchamp, and Man Ray together founded an American Dadaist movement. There Picabia exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz' gallery 291 and contributed to the proto-Dadaist review 291. In 1917 Picabia returned to Europe and joined Dadaist movements in Barcelona, Paris, and Zrich. After Dadaism broke up about 1921, he followed the poet Andr Breton into the Surrealist movement. He subsequently painted in Surrealist, abstract, and figurative styles. Picabia was notable for his inventiveness, adaptability, absurdist humour, and disconcerting changes of style.

Britannica English vocabulary.      Английский словарь Британика.