Born in Paris the 22nd of January 1879 and dead the 30th of November 1953 in Paris, Francis Picabia was a painter, graphic designer and a writer close to the Dada and Surrealist movements.
During his life, Picabia explored most of the artistic movements of his time, exceptional achievement, as exceptional as the period he lived in.
In 1895, Picabia began to study at the Decorative Arts School, at the Louvre's School, at the Humbert Academy, where he met Braque and Marie Laurencin, and at the Fine Arts School of Paris.
After 1902, Picabia's painting is influenced by Pissarro and by Sisley. His impressionnist period will last 10 years and will make him famous. However, little by little, Picabia questioned these plastic values, and broke up with his impressionnist approach in 1908, after his encounter with Gabrièle Buffet.
In 1902, Picabia became orphist and created the Gold Section Salon. The Armory Show exhibition in New York in 1913 made him internationaly famous. From 1913 to 1915, Picabia stayed many times in New York, where he was very active in the avant-garde movements, introducing modern art in the United States.
In 1916, Picabia joined up with dadaism and disseminated the movement in Paris with André Breton, after his encounter with Tristan Tzara in Munich. Polemist, iconoclast, sacrilege, Picabia remained outside Dada as a free electron, being against everything as a principal. But, in 1921, Picabia splitted with the movement and dedicated himself to cinema and photography.
After 1945, Picabia renewed with abstraction, and his last paintings can even be qualified as minimalist: color spots on thick and monochrom backgrounds.
But Picabia's taste for parties and cars ruined him. He died in 1953, suffering from a paralysing illness keeping him away from painting for 2 years.