Francis Picabia Open the gates of night

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) is one of modern art’s most complex and elusive figures – an artist whose work remains, even today, largely uncharted territory. “To have clean ideas you have to change them like shirts”: across a lifetime of restless reinvention, Picabia surged through Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Abstractionism, before closing his career in dialogue with the Informel. Refusing allegiance to any single movement, he fused styles and themes at will, leaving behind a body of work so stylistically divergent it seems the product of many hands rather than one restless mind. Curated by acclaimed writer Anne Berest – the artist’s great-granddaughter – this landmark publication brings together over 170 works from major international public and private collections. Structured in twelve sections built around the theme of night as a metaphor for life, it offers the most complete portrait yet of Picabia’s career, tracing his eclectic style and inviting readers deep into his world - by day, and above all by night. As Berest writes, “Picabia lived by day and by night, to live twice as long as others.” With incisive essays by leading voices including Bernard Marcadé and Eva Ionesco, alongside paintings, works on paper, drawings, videos and rare archival material, this book pulls back the curtain on Picabia’s intimate, enigmatic universe - revealing, at last, the full measure of an artist who never stopped reinventing himself.