The Lovers

/ Francis Picabia /

The museum owns thirteen works by Francis Picabia. With the exception of engravings from his Impressionist period acquired by the Petit Palais, the first significant works which form the core of the collection came to the museum via the Henry-Thomas Collection.

Picabia settled on the French Riviera in 1925.
He painted lone figures and kissing couples in Ripolin paint: Monsters and Kisses. Their strange pictorial quality indicates a double rejection, namely of “traditional methods of painting” and the Dada style which had become fossilised. However the process of creating an image remained unchanged and popular postcards simply replaced magazines popularising science. The Lovers, a major work from this era in a much larger format than his other canvases and quickly repainted by Picabia in a sombre shade hiding a swarm of graphic motifs around the figures, carries his blend of burlesque and morbid melancholy to the utmost limit, equalling The Kiss, a contemporary work by Picasso, in its power. The two artists often met on the beach at Golfe-Juan.