Francis Picabia

Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, Paintings by Francis Picabia, 1936, no. 10 

Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Picabia, New York, 1985, nos. 834 & 835, illustrated p. 405

Canvas is unlined; the edges are reinforced with tape. There is cracking throughout, predominantly in the sky. This cracking is part of the artist's process. Some frame abrasion at extreme lower right corner near artist's dating. Two small surface abrasions: one below the rolled scroll near lower center and the other in the green of the hills at left. Under UV light two one-inch horizontal strokes of inpainting visible near the standing figure's head. A further horizontal stroke is found just below the open book at lower left as well as several strokes at bottom edge near center. One further diagonal line of retouching is visible at bottom right between the artist's first and last names, otherwise fine. This work is in good condition.
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Painted in 1935, Alpha et omega marks a decisive turning point in Francis Picabia's work immediately following his seminal Transparencies series. Gertrude Stein, a close friend and one of the artist's primary supporters, organized an exhibition later that year at the Arts Club of Chicago, in order to unveil his recent paintings to the American public. By showing only figurative pictures, without any of the superimposed elements of his Transparencies, Picabia took the public by surprise. While documentation of the paintings in the exhibition is scarce, the present known to have been included in the exhibition and furthermore, reworked shortly after the exhibition closed. William Camfield writes, "...every documented work is characterized by deliberately simplified, heavily outlined and solid images in which transparency is wholly eliminated. In some instances, the forms are summarily modeled in light and dark, but for the most part these boldly contoured figures are filled in with bright, flat colors or washed over with a blue-green tone"(William A. Camfield, Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times, Princeton, 1979, p. 248). These new works were shocking to viewers and the exhibition was not well received. Not for the first time, Picabia's pictures were out of step with their time. Camfield notes "Regardless of the period of his career, Picabia painted essentially for himself:  he painted what he wanted to paint, enjoyed it and took it seriously. While Picabia's precise intentions are not known for these particular works...his correspondence with Gertrude Stein and the witness of Olga Picabia make it clear that he considered them significant paintings" (ibid., p. 249).

Alpha et omega was not the only painting which Picabia re-worked following the Arts Club of Chicago exhibition. While in Alpha et Omega the principal change was the painting of a mask over the standing nude’s eyes, Portrait of a Man with Skull was entirely transformed to Portrait of a Doctor where heavy dark outlines cover the figure’s face, abstracted shapes float on the surface of the canvas and large horns extend from each side of the figure’s head (as illustrated in ibid. nos. 366 & 367). This group of works was painted at the Château de Mai in Mougins, Picabia’s residence, first with Germaine and then with Olga, from 1925 to 1935. Indeed this was the last series of works the artist completed there.