Francis Picabia “Very Rare Picture on Earth” (Très rare Tableau sur la Terre) at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in Italy

Very Rare Picture Painting - Oil, Metallic paint on board, Silver, Gold leaf on Wood (125.7 x 97.8 cm) 1915

Francis Picabia, whose full name is Francis Marie Martinez Picabia, was born in Paris to a Spanish father and a French mother.

He studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1895 to 1897 and began painting in the Impressionists' style from 1902.

But in 1908, his style changed radically under the influence of Fauvism, Neo-Impressionism and Cubism.

He then turned to abstraction until the 1920s.

He was a friend of Guillaume Apollinaire and Marcel Duchamp.

The year 1915 was marked by his machinist and mechanical approach, of which the painting exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum is a perfect example.

Very Rare Picture He retained this type of work until 1923.

This painting depicts a face with two eyes, nose and mouth.

But it's also more than that.

There is a dynamic mechanical moving before our eyes; the machine, with its apparent gears, is in motion.

For some, this table can be read as an evocation of a sexual act transcribed in mechanical terms, a dispassionate view of sex.

For others, it is an alchemical machine that would be represented by the eyes, one gold and the other silver.

We also notice Francis Picabia's humour in the upper left corner of the painting where he wrote: “Very Rare Painting on Earth”.

Very Rare Picture