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FRANCIS PICABIA (born January. 22, 1879  died November. 30, 1953 ) was a French painter, illustrator, writer and poet, who explored most of the artistic movements of his time; After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and the École des Arts Décoratifs, he painted for a time in an Impressionist and then a Cubist style. In 1915 he founded with MARCEL DUCHAMP and MAN RAY an American Dadaist movement. In 1917 PICABIA returned to Europe and joined Dadaist movements in Barcelona, Paris, and Zürich. After Dadaism broke up about 1921, he followed the poet ANDRÉ BRETON into the Surrealist movement.

In the early 1920s the covers of a number of issue of Littérature, a critical review under ANDRÉ BRETON‘s directorship, featured drawings by FRANCIS PICABIA. These drawings were based on a distortion (détournement) of advertising images and they bore a striking resemblance to the improvisational and surrealist “automatic drawings”. On August 8, 1923 ANDRÉ BRETON received an envelope from PICABIA containing drawings, several of which he made expressly for the cover of Littérature. For decades that envelope lay all but forgotten in BRETON’s archives. Recently, these drawings were brought to light by BRETON’s daughter and have now been offered for sale as a set.– Purple Magazine SS/2010

The rediscovered drawings are represented by Marcel and David Fleiss of the Galerie 1900-2000, Paris. You can view more drawing in the Purple Magazine SS/2010 , issue 13

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found via purple magazine