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In Short
“The pictures Picabia was painting in March 1942 were so precise, with colors so true to life, that the acerbic critics exclaimed ‘But this is photography!’” – Michel Perrin Picabia in the 1940s
Executed during the beginning of the 1940s after relocating to the South of France, Portrait de Femme belongs to Francis Picabia’s series of figurative, sexualized depictions of women which has bewildered art historians for decades. Often using photographs found in softcore pornographic magazines, movie star picture postcards, and nightclub advertisements as source imagery, the artist rendered these women in a kitsch-forward, realist style which formed a sharp contrast to the machine drawings and transparencies that preoccupied him prior. These works, created during the height of World War II, epitomized Picabia’s tendency to relentlessly change styles and challenge convention, perplexing viewers and critics alike. Today, Portrait de Femme and this unique series are considered some of the first postmodern paintings, presaging not only the distinct language of Eric Fischl and John Currin but also the interest in authorship and popular culture that fascinated Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jeff Koons.
For these photo-based works such as Portrait de Femme, Picabia scoured postcards depicting
actresses and softcore pornographic magazines
including Paris Sex Appeal and Plais Plaisir for imagery. In some cases these two sources were ambiguously combined, such as in Portrait de Femme, which resembles a 1930s headshot that has been dramatically sexualized due to implied nudity and an alluring stare. After procuring the photographs, the artist appropriated the original image using his own idiosyncratic technique, which combined a smooth application of paint with a looser, more expressionistic approach for background spaces.
Various covers of Paris Sex Appeal magazine.
Picabia’s women that form this series were so realistic that the artist’s friend, Michel Perrin, recalled, “The pictures Picabia was painting in March 1942 were so precise, with colors so true to life, that the acerbic critics exclaimed ‘But this is photography!’”[i] This photorealist quality, combining both imitation and parody, betrayed an interest with mass media, popular culture, and authenticity which would become central to the work of multiple generations of artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Jeff Koons.
In the 1980s, Picabia’s series of photo-based works was shown in several exhibitions across Europe, and during this period art historian Robert Rosenblum interpreted the pictures as “a rebellious dissatisfaction with idées reçues of modern art’s hierarchy.”[ii] Due to this international exposure during a widespread revival of figurative painting, this body of work influenced numerous artists, such as Eric Fishl and David Salle, and later, John Currin.
Roy Lichtenstein, Girl with Hair Ribbon, 1965. Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Artwork © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
John Currin, Untitled, 1998. Private Collection,
Artwork © John Currin
One of the artist’s signature jabs at the art establishment, this series subverted accepted notions of modernism, blurring distinctions between “high” and “low” culture. Lawrence Alloway elucidated that these works, including Portrait de Femme, coalesce “the odd compound of imitation and parody, of accepting influences and caricaturing them…As so often in Picabia, it is hard to decide whether we are looking at a botched imitation, a brutal parody, or a subtle imagination which operates in a personal territory between loyal copying and ironic parody.”[iii]
[i] Michel Perrin, quoted in Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Picabia, London, 1985, p. 423.
[ii] Robert Rosenblum, quoted in Michèle Cone, Francis Picabia, exh. cat., Michael Werner Galley, New York, 1983, pp. 226-27.
[iii] Lawrence Alloway, “London Letter,” Art International, III, no. 9, 1959, p. 24.Picabia's Women
Portrait of Suzy Solidor, 1933
Francis Picabia, Portrait of Suzy Solidor, 1933. Private Collection, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
In his bold mocking of the Parisian avant-garde, Picabia has employed the erotic female nude in manifold ways, from his Dadaist, anthropomorphic machine drawings to his gruesome Monsters, to the classical renderings of women found in his later Transparencies series. 
Francis Picabia, Femmes au bull-dog (Women with Bulldog), 1941-1942. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Photo: Jean-Claude Planchet © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Portrait of Mistinguett, circa 1908-1911 
Francis Picabia, Portrait of Mistinguett, circa 1908-1911. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Photo credit: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation / Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Pariss
Portrait d'une jeune fille américaine dans l'état de nudité, 1915 
Francis Picabia, Portrait d'une jeune fille américaine dans l'état de nudité, 1915. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Photo: Hervé Lewandowski © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Udnie (Young American Girl, or the Dance), 1913
Francis Picabia, Udnie (Young American Girl, or the Dance), 1913. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris La nuit espagnole (Spanish Night), 1922 
Francis Picabia, La nuit espagnole (Spanish Night), 1922. Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Photo credit: bpk Bildagentur / Museum Ludwig / Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne / Sabrina Walz / Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Salome, 1930 
Francis Picabia, Salome, 1930. Collection Broere Charitable Foundation, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Portrait of Suzy Solidor, 1933
Francis Picabia, Portrait of Suzy Solidor, 1933. Private Collection, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
In his bold mocking of the Parisian avant-garde, Picabia has employed the erotic female nude in manifold ways, from his Dadaist, anthropomorphic machine drawings to his gruesome Monsters, to the classical renderings of women found in his later Transparencies series. Francis Picabia, Femmes au bull-dog (Women with Bulldog), 1941-1942. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Photo: Jean-Claude Planchet © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
David Salle on Picabia
“Kasper [König] had installed a pretty large room with paintings from the late ‘30s and ‘40s, as well as a few from the ‘50s, mostly the so-called kitsch paintings: nudes with dogs, nudes with eroticized flowers, bullfighters, mythological-looking animals, which were all but unknown at the time. They had simply never been seen by artists of my generation, nor, I got the feeling, by anyone else. I was very taken by these paintings; I felt an immediate connection to the sensibility.
Something about the style—so lurid and melodramatic and full of unlikely juxtapositions, not to mention the somewhat ham-handed way of painting, with its chiseled brushstrokes alternating with little curlicues, and the unabashedly eroticized magazine imagery presented front and center—all struck a chord in me. I had never before seen painting as untethered to notions of taste, or even intention; there was no way of knowing how to take them, even whether to take them seriously at all. The work was so un-defended—it was like a delirious free-fall. The freedom in those pictures buoyed me up. It was an exhilarating feeling.” - David Salle
David Salle, Age of Anxiety, 2012. Private Collection, Artwork © David Salle/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Provenance
Private Collection
Artcurial, Paris, October 20, 2007, lot 38
Collections Aristophil
Aguttes, Paris, April 1, 2019, lot 234
Acquired at the above sale by the present ownerArtist Biography
Francis Picabia
Few members of the 20th Century avant-garde are as paradoxical as Francis Picabia. Though best known today for his work as a Dadaist, his oeuvre is characterized by the many disparate styles he switched embrace over the course of his fifty-year career. He first garnered attention for late Post-Impressionist works done in the style of Paul Signac but later assumed a Cubistic style as he participated in the advent of abstraction. Picabia then developed a more radical aesthetic through his friendships with leading members of the avant-garde like Marcel Duchamp, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Man Ray, creating mechanistic anatomies and Dadaist works that integrate text and refined abstract forms. He flirted next with Surrealism, creating dreamlike strata of layered imagery and later experimented with intentionally garish works based on found photos before rounding out his career by returning to expressions of pure abstraction. The only constant in Picabia’s career was his unwillingness to remain the same.
Picabia’s work has been widely celebrated during and after his lifetime with several significant retrospectives, including a landmark 2016 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Picabia’s work is held in the permanent collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Tate, London, and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.
7
Portrait de femme
signed “Francis Picabia” lower right
oil on panel
15 1/2 x 11 1/2 in. (39.4 x 29.2 cm)
Painted circa 1941-1942.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Comité Picabia under no. 2934.
Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $350,000
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Evening Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1278
20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 2 July 2020
1
Titus Kaphar
Untitled (red thread lady)
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $187,500
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2
Matthew Wong
Mood Room
Estimate $60,000 - 80,000
Sold for $848,000
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3
Lucas Arruda
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $350,000
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4
Helen Frankenthaler
Head of the Meadow
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $3,020,000
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5
Joan Mitchell
Noël
Estimate $9,500,000 - 12,500,000
Sold for $11,062,500
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6
Christina Quarles
Placed
Estimate $70,000 - 100,000
Sold for $400,000
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7
Francis Picabia
Portrait de femme
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $350,000
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8
KAWS
COMPANION (DETAIL OF CROWD SHOT)
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,380,000
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9
Robert Nava
The Tunnel
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $162,500
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10
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Victor 25448
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $9,250,000
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11
George Condo
Stump Head
Estimate $900,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,050,000
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12
Banksy
Monkey Poison
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,000,000
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13
Maxfield Parrish
Humpty Dumpty
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $740,000
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14
Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe
Shade of Black
Estimate $20,000 - 30,000
Sold for $250,000
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15
Charles White
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $800,000
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16
Ali Banisadr
Motherboard
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $572,000
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17
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (801-3)
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $3,680,000
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18
Albert Oehlen
Im Museum II
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $560,000
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19
Thomas Struth
Notre Dame, Paris
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $400,000
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20
David Hammons
Hidden Drawing (Jordan begins 8th season as No. 1)
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $181,250
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21
Julio González
L'arlequin / Pierrot ou Colombine
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $920,000
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22
Amoako Boafo
Joy in Purple
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
Sold for $668,000
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23
Fernando Botero
Woman
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,004,000
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24
Donald Judd
Untitled
Estimate $550,000 - 750,000
Sold for $680,000
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25
Sturtevant
Stella Gran Cairo
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $620,000
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