Picabia, Francis (1879–1953)

French painter and sculptor. By 1909 he was working in a cubist style, but by the outbreak of World War I had already become a leading member of the Dada movement, which he helped to take to the USA. Appearing in many styles – usually provocative, anarchic, and experimental – his work reveals a preoccupation with machinery, often regarded as the enemy of life.

An early painting, revealing both the influence of cubism and his preoccupations with machinery and the erotic, is I See Again in Memory my Dear Udnie 1913 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). It was during his second visit to New York 1915–16 that he joined with Marcel Duchamp in the Dadaist revolt, helping to publish the magazines 292 and 391. After taking the movement to Barcelona, he worked in Zürich and then settled in Paris, where he participated in the surrealist movement.