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1879-1953
FEMME À LA FENÊTRE ET NU

104 by 75cm., 41 by 29½in.

Painted in 1941-42.

signed Francis Picabia (lower left)

oil on canvas

To be included in the Picabia Catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Comité Picabia.

PROVENANCE

Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg

EXHIBITED

Lisbon, Centro Cultural de Bélem, Francis Picabia Anthology, 1997, no. 97, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble & Geneva, Musée du Petit Palais, Francis Picabia: les Nus et la méthode, 1997-98, no. 22, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Hamburg, Galerie Brockstedt, Francis Picabia, 1998, no. 18, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

NOTE

The present work was painted not long after Picabia returned to the port of Golfe-Juan on the Côte d'Azur in June 1940. He had recently married his long-time companion Olga Mohler and settled back into his life and his work as best he could following the upheavals of war. As he had done so many times before in his career, Picabia undertook a radical development in his painting, predominantly executing pictures of women, many of them nude and in seductive poses, in a new and highly realistic style. Research has shown that these paintings were directly based on photographs found in magazines and on postcards that date from the 1930s and 1940s (figs. 1 & 2). Their use of popular imagery 'hails them as precursors in subject, style and content to the phenomenon of Pop Art during the 1960s (W. A. Camfield, Francis Picabia, His Art, Life and Times, Princeton, 1979, p. 257).

Femme à la fenêtre et nu is perhaps one of the finest examples of Picabia's work from this period. The artist here depicts figures found in two seperate photographs. The figure on the left undressing is a direct extract from the photograph of the woman by the sea (fig. 1) as she is seen from behind casually taking her dress off. The figure seated on the right is undoubtedly referenced from the photograph of the woman seated at the window (fig. 2) but Picabia has modified several features such as the expression of the woman's face and the patterns of her dress. These very slight modifications have successfully infused the work with an element of mystery, intrigue and seduction.

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FIG. 1, Photograph of a woman undressing, Paris Magazine, no. 70, August 1937

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FIG. 2, Photograph of a woman sitting at a window, La Madelon, no. 61, June 1939