Francis Picabia. Zürich and New York

Trevor Stark | The Burlington Magazine | 15th May 2017

The key works for which Picabia is acclaimed occurred in one decade. But a broader focus across his whole career produces a withering assessment. “The retrospective demonstrated how, depending on his target and on the contingencies of the historical moment, Picabia’s abiding negativity oscillated between the nihilist’s glee in puncturing false optimism and the reactionary’s complicit snigger in the face of horror.”