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PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTOR

1879-1953
TABARIN

TABARIN

105 by 76cm., 41 3/8 by 30in.

Painted circa 1942-43.

signed Francis Picabia (lower left) and titled (lower right)

oil on paper laid down on board

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Picabia.

PROVENANCE

Private Collection (sale: Sotheby's, New York, 16th February 1989, lot 152)
Pierre Nahon, Paris
Acquired by the present owner on 18th October 1994

EXHIBITED

Brussels, Musée d'Ixelles, Picabia, 1879-1953, 1983, no. 65, illustrated in the catalogue (as dating from 1935)
Tokyo, Museum of Modern Art & Seibu Takanawa, The Seibu Museum of Art, Francis Picabia, 1984, no. 57, illustrated in the catalogue (as dating from 1935)
Madrid, Salas Pablo Ruiz Picasso del Ministerio de Cultura & Barcelona, Fundació Caixa de Pensions, Francis Picabia, 1985, no. 115, illustrated in the catalogue
Nîmes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Francis Picabia, 1986, no. 100, illustrated in the catalogue (as dating from 1935)
Nice, Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, Picabia et la Côte d'Azur, 1991, no. 55, illustrated in the catalogue (as dating from 1935)
Hamburg, Deitchtorhallen & Rotterdam, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Francis Picabia, The Late Works, 1933-1953, 1997-98, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (as dating from 1935)

LITERATURE

Maria Lluîsa Borràs, Picabia, London, 1985, no. 843, fig. 1069, illustrated p. 481(as dating from circa 1946-47)

NOTE

The title of Tabarin refers to the Bal Tabarin, a cabaret in Montmartre, which earlier in the century had been a source of inspiration to the both Severini and Pascin. The major rival of the Moulin Rouge, the Bal Tabarin was famous for its French Cancan, and remained popular until its closure in 1966.

In June 1940, Picabia returned to the port of Golfe-Juan on the Côte d'Azur. He had recently married his long-time companion Olga Mohler, and settled back into life as best he could, following the upheavals of war. Writing to Gertrude Stein in December 1941, he described his recent painting: 'I work from morning to night -- they are my only good moments... My painting is more and more the image of my life and of life, but a life which cannot and does not wish to regard the world' (quoted in William A. Camfield, Francis Picabia, His Art, Life and Times, Princeton, 1979, pp. 257-58).

As he had done so many times before in his career, he undertook a radical development in his painting, executing predominantly pictures of women, many of them nude and in seductive poses, in a new, highly realistic style. Recent research has shown that these paintings were directly based on photographs found in magazines and on postcards that date from the 1930s and 1940s. Their use of popular imagery 'hails them as precursors in subject, style and content to the phenomenon of Pop Art during the 1960s (Camfield, op. cit., p. 257).

However, Tabarin differs from the majority of these paintings, in which the sitters pose, motionless. Indeed, Tabarin is most probably unique, since the subject is in full movement, captured as if in a freeze-frame, with her leg fully extended in a high kick.

08_COMP Fig.1, Photograph of a Cancan girl