Francis Picabia:Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning
Francis Picabia:Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning Cover, Courstey of Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Presented in English and French, this bilingual publication is a groundbreaking exploration of Francis Picabia’s practice between 1945 and 1952—a remarkable period of new creativity and experimentation for the legendary artist. The latest title from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, ‘Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning’ explores the practice of Francis Picabia between the years 1945 and 1952—an incredibly rich period during which Picabia created paintings unlike anything he had produced before. This bilingual English/French catalogue accompanies the first major solo exhibition to exclusively explore this unique final period in Picabia’s oeuvre, on view at Hauser & Wirth Paris this January. With contributions from the exhibition’s curators, Comité Picabia president Beverley Calté and art historian Arnauld Pierre, as well as scholar Candace Clements, this new publication is both an excellent record of a noteworthy exhibition and an essential resource on this crucial chapter in Picabia’s practice.
With a career defined by a restless, visionary approach, Picabia was one of the great innovators of 20th- century modernism. From 1945 onwards, he abandoned his famous wartime Nudes, moving into a new era of nonfigurative art that drew on fresh sources of inspiration and was marked by a particular interest in surface texture. The bold group of works documented in ‘Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning’ represents the artist’s own definitions of abstraction and reveals the creation of a new visual language that sets these works apart from anything the artist had done before. Elegantly designed with foil-stamped text on the cover and spine, the clothbound catalogue features almost 150 illustrations that offer readers exceptional access to the colors, contours and textures of Picabia’s remarkable canvases.
Francis Picabia, Maintenant et autrefois (Now and Then), 1946 Oil on canvas, 100 × 81 cm (39 ⅜ × 31 ⅞ in.) Courtesy Galerie 1900-2000, Paris Photo: courtesy Archives Comité Picabia, Paris
Following a preface by Calté, an essay by Pierre contextualizes Picabia’s very personal position within the vibrant Parisian postwar art scene and the rise of art informel. He sheds light on the signs and symbols buried in Picabia’s abstractions, the influence of prehistory and primitivism on his work and its pictorial language, and the new painting techniques he employed in this period. This is complemented by an essay by Clements which examines Picabia’s postwar repaints. With much of Picabia’s postwar production comprising works painted over other works—sometimes more than once—Clements considers how these ‘flexible and deeply contingent’ works might be an ‘inadvertent revelation or intentional presentation of [Picabia’s] vaunted, fluid subjectivity.’
Francis Picabia, Haschich, 1948 Oil on canvas, 116 × 88 cm (45 ⅝ × 34 ⅝ in.) Private collection Photo: courtesy Archives Comité Picabia, Paris
‘Francis Picabia. Éternal recommencement / Eternal Beginning’ is on view at Hauser & Wirth Paris from 18 January through 12 March 2025 and will then travel to Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street from 1 May through 25 July 2025.
Spreads from an album devoted to Francis Picabia's life and work compiled by Olga Mohler Picabia from 1936 to 1952 Photo: courtesy Archives Comité Picabia, Paris
Francis Picabia:
Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning
Preface by Beverley Calté.
Texts by Arnauld Pierre & Candance Clements
HARDCOVER
24 × 29 CM
978-3-906915-99-9
CHF52.00 / £50.00 / $58.00 / €55.00
English / French
Picabia in his studio at 26 rue Danielle Casanova (formerly rue des Petits-Champs), Paris, ca. 1948–49 Photo: courtesy Archives Comité Picabia, Paris
About the Artist
Francis Picabia (1879–1953) was born François Martinez Picabia in Paris, to a Spanish father and a French mother. After initially painting in an Impressionist manner, elements of Fauvism and Neo-Impressionism as well as Cubism and other forms of abstraction began to appear in his painting in 1908, and by 1912 he had evolved a personal amalgam of Cubism and Fauvism. In 1915—which marked the beginning of Picabia’s machinist or mechanomorphic period—he and Marcel Duchamp, among others, instigated and participated in Dada manifestations in New York. For the next few years, Picabia remained involved with the Dadaists in Zurich and Paris, but finally denounced Dada in 1921 for no longer being “new.” The following year, he returned to figurative art, but resumed painting in an abstract style by the end of World War II.
About Hauser & Wirth Publishers
In keeping with Hauser & Wirth’s artist-centric vision, Hauser & Wirth Publishers works to bring readers into the universe of artists and behind the scenes of their practices. From publishing artists’ writings and exceptional exhibition-related books to commissioning new scholarship and pursuing the highest levels of craft in design and bookmaking, Hauser & Wirth Publishers creates vital, lasting records of artists’ work and ideas, forging critical gateways to the cultural discourse they inspire. Through its Oral History Initiative, Hauser & Wirth Publishers is building an enduring record of artists’ voices for future generations. Additionally, the imprint publishes Ursula magazine, a bi-annual print and digital periodicathat features essays, profiles, interviews, original portfolios, films and photography by thought-provoking writers and artists from around the world.
For more information about this title and others with Hauser & Wirth Publishing, please visit their site here. Please visit the Hauser & Wirth Gallery site for information about upcoming exhibitions. Also, follow the gallery on Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube. The magazine did a feature of the exhibition of the same name, which can be found here.
