Modern Art Monday Presents: Francis Picabia, I See Again in Memory My Dear Udnie

francis picabia painting photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

In this large painting of pulsating, interpenetrating pistons, orifices, and circuitry, Francis Picabia fuses the mechanical with the biological. The work evidences his predilection for machines, which intensified during a 1913 visit to New York. As one reviewer noted, “Picabia admits to having put all former things behind him, and having grasped the genius of American machinery as the new medium through which his art may be expressed.” The artist also associated this 1914 painting, I See Again . . . with dancer, Stacia Napierkowska, whom he witnessed rehearsing while on board the ocean liner that took him from France to New York.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City

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