Private Collection, Maison-Laffitte
Private Collection, Germany (acquired in the late 1980s)

Seibu Takanawa, The Museum of Modern Art & Tokyo, The Seibu Museum of Art, Francis Picabia, 1984, no. 40, illustrated in the catalogue 
Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art & Frankfurt, Galerie Neuendorf, Picabia: 1879-1953, 1988, no. 31, illustrated in the catalogue

The canvas is not lined. There is a thick uneven varnish through which the UV light cannot fully penetrate. There is a line of scattered spots of retouching running from the lower right corner to the centre left of the lower edge. There is an 8cm. line of retouching running vertically from the lower edge near the left corner. Apart from some scattered spots of retouching to the upper edge, this work is in good condition. Colours: The colours are richer and more subtle in the original.
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The present work belongs to a group of paintings known as Transparences that Picabia executed in the late 1920s and early 1930s, deriving their name from multiple layers of overlapping imagery. In this painting, the image is composed of three female faces seen from a variety of different aspects. The faces are surrounded by a variety of organic forms, characteristic of the natural world Picabia often incorporated in his Transparences. These images, simul🍬taneously transparent and opaquꦏe, are manipulated by Picabia in scale and orientation in such a way as to create a seemingly impenetrable allegory with characteristics of a dream or a mystic vision.

Besides natural phenomena, Picabia's Transparences also draw their inspiration from Romanesque frescoes, Renaissance painting and Catalan art. In addition, the artist often treated surfaꦉces of his comp❀ositions in such a way as to give them an aged feel. Rich in cultural references, these paintings combine their varied images into compositions of great beauty and harmony. Following his experimentation with Dada and abstraction, in the 1920s Picabia turned away from the aesthetic of shock towards a kind of 'renaissance', creating figurative images of mysterious, contemplative beauty. Despite the wealth of artistic, cultural and natural references, the meanings of the transparencies remain deliberately obscure and ambiguous, and their power lies in their evocative beauty and elegance of execution.