The latest title from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, ‘Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning’ explores the practice of Francis Picabia between the years 1945 and 1952—an incredibly rich period during which Picabia created paintings unlike anything he had produced before.
This bilingual English/French catalogue accompanies the first major solo exhibition to exclusively explore this unique final period in Picabia’s oeuvre, on view at Hauser & Wirth Paris this January. With contributions from the exhibition’s curators, Comité Picabia president Beverley Calté and art historian Arnauld Pierre, as well as scholar Candace Clements, this new publication is both an
excellent record of a noteworthy exhibition and an essential resource on this crucial chapter in Picabia’s practice
from an album devoted to Francis Picabia’s life and work compiled by Olga
Mohler Picabia from 1936 to 1952
Photo: courtesy Archives Comité Picabia, Paris
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Publishers
With a career defined by a restless, visionary approach, Picabia was one of the great innovators of 20th-century modernism. From 1945 onwards, he abandoned his famous wartime Nudes, moving into a new era of nonfigurative art that drew on fresh sources of inspiration and was marked by a particular interest in surface texture.
The bold group of works documented in ‘Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning’ represents the artist’s own definitions of abstraction and reveals the creation of a new visual language that sets these works apart from anything the artist had done before. Elegantly designed with foil-stamped text on the cover and spine, the clothbound catalogue features almost 150 illustrations that offer readers exceptional access to the colors, contours and textures of Picabia’s remarkable canvases.
Oil on canvas, 55 × 46 cm (21 ⅝ × 18 ⅛ in.)
Bilinelli Collection, Milan
Photo: Courtesy of Archives Comité Picabia, Paris
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Following a preface by Calté, an essay by Pierre contextualizes Picabia’s very personal position within the vibrant Parisian postwar art scene and the rise of art informel. He sheds light on the signs and symbols buried in Picabia’s abstractions, the influence of prehistory and primitivism on his work and its pictorial language, and the new painting techniques he employed in this period. This is complemented by an essay by Clements which examines Picabia’s postwar repaints. With much of Picabia’s postwar production comprising works painted over other works—sometimes more than once—Clements considers how these ‘flexible and deeply contingent’ works might be an ‘inadvertent revelation or intentional presentation of [Picabia’s] vaunted, fluid subjectivity.’
Photo: Courtesy of Archives Comité Picabia, Paris
Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Publishers
‘Francis Picabia. Éternal recommencement / Eternal Beginning’ is on view at Hauser & Wirth Paris from 18 January through 12 March 2025 and will then travel to Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street from 1 May through 25 July 2025.
Francis Picabia: Éternel recommencement / Eternal Beginning
Preface by Beverley Calté.
Texts by Arnauld Pierre & Candance Clements
HARDCOVER24 × 29 CM978-3-906915-99-9
CHF52.00 / £50.00 / $58.00 / €55.00
English / French
©2024 Hauser & Wirth Publishers
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