Title: Ici, C’est Stieglitz
Date: 1915
Movement: Dada
Media: Ink, graphite, and cut-and-pasted painted and printed papers on paperboard
Location: Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Picabia worked closely with gallerist Stieglitz but later criticised him, as seen in this ‘portrait’ depicting the gallerist as a bellows camera, a gearshift, a brake lever and the word ‘IDEAL’. The camera is broken, the gear is in neutral, and the lettering is decorative Gothic to symbolize the past. The drawing is one of a series of mechanistic imagery portraits created by Picabla and demonstrates that the subject matter could provide an alternative to the more tradition artistic symbolry.
Artist: Francis Picabia
Born: 22 January 1879, Paris, France
French
Died: 30 November 1953, Paris, France
Francis Picabia was an avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimentations with Impressionism and Pointillism, he became associated with Cubism. An early major figure of the Dada movement his work consisted of highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. Later he was briefly associated with Surrealism before he turned his back on the art establishment. Picabla died in Paris in 1953 and was interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris, France.
