Francis Picabia (1879-1953) is the patron saint of stylistic disunity. He trained in Paris’s École des Arts Décoratifs, then devoted himself to meticulous historical paintings, but had his first breakthrough as an Alfred Sisley-inspired impressionist. He rose to prominence with scintillating works of orphic cubism, with shapes dancing around the canvas, then spent much of the first world war painting anthropomorphic machines. He joined dada, then renounced it. He befriended Breton, then repudiated him. In 1925, he returned to figurative painting; by the end of his life, he had returned to abstraction.
