Francis Picabia: Éternel Recommencement / Eternal Beginning

Exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Paris, 18 January - 12 March 2025 ;
then at Hauser & Wirth New York, 1 May - 25 July 2025

Between 1945 and 1952 - from his return to Paris to the year before his death - Francis Picabia (1879-1953) created paintings that were unlike anything he had produced before, while working with the Art Informel movement that was developing in Paris.

With a preface by Beverley Calté, President of the Picabia Committee, this exhibition catalogue looks for the first time at this incredibly rich period in the artist's work. More than 40 works provide an insight into this highly radical period, which saw the painter abandon the erotic plasticity of the female nudes of the previous period in favour of abstract forms and a new approach to surface texture.

Essays by art historians Arnauld Pierre and Candace Clements shed new light on the signs and symbols hidden in his abstractions, the new painting techniques he employed and the mysterious and fantastical reappearance of the ‘point’ in his work.