Francis Picabia - Heads landscape

• Title: Heads landscape
• Artist: Francis Picabia (1879-1953)
• Date: 1928
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 60 × 81 cm

Heads-landscape (Têtes-paysage) belongs to Picabia’s “Transparency” series, a group of works so named for the artist’s use of multilayered, transparent images. In the dreamlike tableaux of the transparencies, Picabia referenced visual sources ranging from ancient Rome to the Renaissance, often juxtaposing the sacred with the profane. These works draw on mythology, religion, and conventions of beauty and, in their blending of the unexpected, project a distinctly Surrealist sensibility. The painting is a mix of traditions and modernity.