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Francis Picabia

"My Dear Francis"

Correspondence

Author

Author André Breton
Letter to Francis Picabia

Description

Autograph letter signed by André Breton to Francis Picabia, Paris, 1 December 1952.

This letter from Breton is in fact a preface (given with six other letters) for an exhibition of the painter organised in December 1952 and January 1953 at the Colette Allendy gallery. It was included in the definitive edition of Surréalisme et la peinture in 1965. Confronted with "the ridiculous quarrel in art between the concrete and the abstract is becoming so furious that it threatens to make the whole herd dizzy," Picabia's work is of a nature that can show the way to overcoming this, notably because it is at the origins of abstract art. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Autograph letter to Picabia, signed, Paris, 1 December 1952.​​​​​​​
- 1 page in-4° of the first draft of a letter addressed to Picabia, handwritten, dated, and signed in ink by André Breton, with erasures and corrections:
"My dear Francis, a new communication from you? 
"It is more greatly needed, and from me eagerly awaited than ever, at a time when the ridiculous quarrel in art between the concrete and the abstract is becoming so furious that it threatens to make the whole herd dizzy.
"We have not forgotten that ‘abstraction’ in painting was born around 1908 from one of your whims and that you were a sufficiently great monarch not to have to isolated it from the fruits of your other loves - which might well have been beautiful Spanish women.” [Sale Catalogue, 2003]

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition publiée sous la direction d'Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier et Marie-Claire Dumas), « Francis Picabia », Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 621-622, notice p. 1329