Francis Picabia

Mm-hmm.

Uh, it starts with a discussion of a photograph of Erik Satie, the composer, René Clair, the filmmaker, and Francis Picabia, the artist, as they're collaborating on the 1924 Dadaist short film, Entr'acte.

Mm-hmm.

Which I don't know if you've seen Entr'acte or if you've seen it recently.

We do t- we do secondary market dealing in artists that he actually, um, discovered sometimes.

For example, Baselitz, um, he discovered Baselitz, he discovered Fontana, he did a lot of work with Picabia, et cetera.

And so we're continuing his legacy while also incorporating, uh, next generation artists into the program, and we're having a lot of fun with that and we feel like it's really important to support artists.

There is an interesting contradiction, I guess, um, where we are, um, digitalizing more and more of, of the art market, yet the major fairs, dinners, opening and personal, um, relationships seem to be as important as ever.

Is there a quote or a motto you could leave our listeners with?

Yeah, my favorite is Francis Picabia.

He said, our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.

I think that we are at a point in our society where everyone is so married to their own beliefs, so married to what they think is right.

But just on Schiaparelli and that incredible exhibition, I think...

So Elsa Schiaparelli was an incredible designer who founded her brand in 1927 and she had really the peak of her career was in the 30s and 40s and she crafted some incredible relationships with fantastic designers and artists of the time, like Salvador Dalí, like Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, Jean-Michel Franck, Picasso, Francis Picabia.

So the top of the top of surrealism and Dada art.

cubism and but I think the reason why she had this incredible success is apart from herself being a surrealist like a woman in a surrealistic world and making these incredible avant-garde pieces she had a really authentic relationships with these artists it's not like now where brands buy the art or the design from an artist, it's all very commercial and it's not as it was then, just built on connection, meeting someone at a dinner and then getting on and building that rapport.

Guglielmo recognised an opportunity.

He began selling African objects alongside works by contemporary European artists, and later represented important modernists, including Modigliani, Matisse, André Duran and Francis Picabia.

Through exhibitions, catalogues, photographs and carefully designed displays, Giliama constructed a story about why these works mattered.

Presentation created attention, attention created desire and desire created a market.

I don't, I don't mind a certain amount of realism.

I like Picabia.

I love Magritte.

Mm.

So you could see the front and the backs of the works as you kind of circumnavigated the room.

And here you can see works from Piet Mondrian to Elion, Georges Fontangelo, Antoine Pevsner's sculpture there, Picabia, there's an Olaszewski in the back.

an incredible Kandinsky on the left there.

So it was an extraordinary gallery to be opening really in the middle of the Second World War, if we're in 1942 at the time.