(Paris 1879–1953)
Paysage Provençal, c. 1937, signed, oil on wood, 49.2 x 39.2 cm, framed

This work is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity issued by Pierre Calté, Comité Picabia, Paris, 30 September 2003.

Provenance:
Marcel Fleiss, Galerie 1900–2000, Paris (label on the reverse)
Sale, Sotheby’s London, 25 October 1989, lot 219
Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie Beaubourg, Paris and Vence (1991–2004)
Sale, Sotheby’s Paris, 18 July 2004, lot 306
European Private Collection (acquired by the current owner at the previous auction)

Exhibited:
Nice, Picabia et La Côte d’Azur, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, 5 July – 6 October 1991, exh. cat. no. 67 with ill.
Gijón, Picabia entre guerras, Palacio Revillagigedo, Centro Internacional de Arte, 31 October – 31 December 1991, exh. cat. no. 56 with ill. XXXIXième Salon de Montrouge, Picabia et Monrouge-Barcelone, April – May 1994, exh. cat. no. 44 with ill.
Vence, Francis Picabia: Classique et merveilleux, Galerie Beaubourg, 6 July – 10 October 1998, exh. cat. no. 134, with ill.

Literature:
W. A. Camfield, B. Calté, C. Clements, A. Pierre (ed.), Francis Picabia. Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III (1927–1939), Mercatorfonds, Brussels, 2019, p. 375, no. 1452, with ill.

Note:
Pentimenti reveal that this Provençal landscape is painted over a transparence involving two superimposed heads, probably of circa 1936

In the dreamlike tableaux of the transparencies, Picabia referenced visual sources ranging from ancient Rome to the Renaissance, often juxtaposing the sacred with the profane. These works draw on mythology, religion, and conventions of beauty and, in their blending of the unexpected, project a distinctly Surrealist sensibility. As much as they reflect the traditional world, however, they also mirror modern times: indeed, Picabia derived his simultaneous, nonhierarchical use of images from his experiments in film, especially his 1924 masterpiece with René Clair, Entr’acte.

“These transparencies with their corner of oubliettes permit me to express for myself the resemblance of my interior desires ...I want a painting where all my instincts may have a free course.”

Francis Picabia, Preface to Galcric Leonce Rosenberg, Exposition Francis Picabia, Paris, December 9–31, 1930