Francis PICABIA (1879-1953)

Lot 11
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Estimation :
50000 - 80000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 156 000EUR
Francis PICABIA (1879-1953)
Untitled, Transparency, circa 1929-1930 Pen and wash drawing, signed lower left 26,5 x 18,5 cm An undated certificate from Olga Picabia will be given to the buyer Provenance : - Georges de Miré - Jacob Epstein - André Schoeller - Private collection, Paris The Fang statue represented here by Francis Picabia is today one of the most famous objects of African art. But this was not yet the case when the artist chose this sculpture for his composition in 1929-1930. It belonged to the Parisian painter and collector Georges de Miré (1899-1965), a true pioneer in the discovery of "negro" art. De Miré constituted from before the first war and until 1930 the most extraordinary collection of African and Oceanian art of his time. Driven to bankruptcy by unfortunate investments, de Miré was forced to sell his entire collection at auction in 1931 at Drouot and it was the American sculptor Jacob Epstein who acquired the Fang statue. It later passed into the hands of the famous collector Carlo Monzino, before being acquired by the Dapper Foundation, which holds it today. In the manner of Man Ray, whose photographs from the 1920s and 1930s show more or less naked white women posing next to African objects, Picabia takes up this theme dear to the primitivists by translating it into his own vein, that of a Transparency superimposing several images whose relationship is not accidental. The artist shows the idealization of a femininity experienced across continents and cultures, but also the ambiguity of bodies and their nudity, where the sacred and the profane, spirituality and eroticism are mixed.
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