Marcel Duchamp “Nude Study of a Sad Young Man on a Train” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice

Painting - Oil on Cardboard (100 x 73 cm) 1911-12

Sad Young Man on a Train Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was born in July 1887 near Blainville, France.

He exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Independents in 1909.

In 1911, his cubist works had the particularity of presenting several successive images of a moving body.

Thus, in 1912 he painted the final version of his "nude descending a staircase".

According to Marcel Duchamp, this sad young man on a train is himself.

Duchamp shows the train inside which one sees the young man smoking and, at the same time, the train's movement, suggested by the repetition of the subject, lines and shapes, broken by the train's shaking.

The semi-transparent glass painting offers a blurred reflection of the external landscape superimposed on the young man's portrait.

Sad Young Man on a Train