Picabia returned to New York in 1915 and resumed contact with artists around Alfred Stieglitz, who were working on 291, a large-format avant-garde magazine. This drawing was one of the first that Picabia contributed to the journal. With its schematic depiction of a coiled spring alongside more organic forms, it reflects the artist’s interest in mechanical imagery, or what photographer and writer Paul Haviland described in Picabia’s work as the “machinomorphic.” It also conveys his contact with Marcel Duchamp, who had arrived in New York at about the same time; together, and with Man Ray, they would lead the rebellious antiwar art movement known as Dada from Europe to New York.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Girl Born without a Mother
Artist:Francis Picabia (French, Paris 1879–1953 Paris)
Date:ca. 1914–15
Medium:Ink on paper
Dimensions:10 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. (26.7 x 21.6 cm)
Classification:Drawings
Credit Line:Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
Accession Number:49.70.18
Inscription: Signed (lower left): Picabia; inscribed (lower right): Fille née sans mère
the artist (probably in 1915 to Stieglitz); Alfred Stieglitz, New York (probably 1915–d. 1946; his estate, 1946–49; gift to MMA)
Modern Gallery, New York. "Picabia Exhibition," January 5–25, 1916, no catalogue (checklist no. 12).
Philadelphia Museum of Art. "History of an American, Alfred Stieglitz: '291' and After, Selections from the Stieglitz Collection," July 1–November 1, 1944, no. 107.
Museum of Modern Art, New York. "Alfred Stieglitz Exhibition: His Collection," June 10–August 31, 1947, no. catalogue (checklist no. 86).
Art Institute of Chicago. "Alfred Stieglitz: His Photographs and His Collection," February 2–29, 1948, no catalogue (checklist no. 121).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings from the Alfred Stieglitz Collection," September 9–November 12, 1967, no catalogue (unnumbered checklist).
Museum of Modern Art, New York. "The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age," November 25, 1968–February 9, 1969, unnumbered cat. (p. 82; as "Fille née sans mère (Girl Born Without a Mother)".
Houston. University of St. Thomas. "The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age," March 25–May 18, 1969, unnumbered cat.
San Francisco Museum of Art. "The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age," June 23–August 24, 1969, unnumbered cat.
New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. "Francis Picabia," September 16–December 6, 1970, no. 41.
Paris. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais. "Francis Picabia," January 23–March 29, 1976, no. 44.
Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. "Tendenzen der Zwanziger Jahre," August 14–October 16, 1977, no. 3/685.
Stadtische Galerie im Stadelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am–Main. "DaDa in Europa: Werke und Dokumente," November 10, 1977–January 8, 1978, no. 3.685.
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracas. "El Espíritu Dada 1915-1925," November 14, 1980–January 15, 1981, unnumbered cat. (p. 185).
Kunsthaus Zürich. "Francis Picabia," February 3–March 25, 1984, no. 25.
Moderna Museet, Stockholm. "Francis Picabia," April 7–May 27, 1984, no. 23 (Swedish edition).
Madrid. Salas Pablo Ruiz Picasso. "Francis Picabia (1879–1953): Exposició antológica Barcelona 1985," January 29–March 31, 1985, no. 29.
Barcelona. Centre Cultural de la Caixa de Pensions. "Francis Picabia (1879–1953): Exposició antológica Barcelona 1985," April 16–May 31, 1985, no. 29.
New York. Whitney Museum of American Art. "Making Mischief: Dada Invades New York," November 21, 1996–February 23, 1997, unnumbered cat. (p. 58).
Düsseldorf. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. "Puppen Körper Automaten: Phantasmen der Moderne (Dolls-Bodies-Automatons: The Phantasms of Modernism)," July 24–October 17, 1999, unnumbered cat. (p. 300).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe," October 13, 2011–January 2, 2012, no. 17.
291 no. 4 (June 1915), frontispiece (based on this work), printed (lower right): "Fille née sans mère" and (lower left): PICABIA, New York, 1915.
"Art and Artists." New York Globe (January 11, 1916), p. 12.
"Picabia's Puzzle." Christian Science Monitor (January 29, 1916), p. 13.
Philip Pearlstein. "The Symbolic Language of Francis Picabia." Arts 30 (January 1956), pp. 39–40, 43, ill.
Marguerite Bonnet in "À propos de Cortège: Apollinaire et Picabia." Revue des lettres modernes nos. 85-89 (November 1963), p. 73.
William A. Camfield. "The Machinist Style of Francis Picabia." Art Bulletin 48 (September-December 1966), p. 314 n. 27, p. 318, fig. 5.
William S. Rubin. Dada and Surrealist Art. New York, 1968, pp. 53, 425, 485, fig. D-64.
Marc Le Bot. Francis Picabia et la crise des valeurs figuratives: 1900–1925. Paris, 1968, pp. 53, 60, 113, 117, 123, 126, fig. 28.
Françoise Will-Levaillant. "Picabia et la machine: Symbole et abstraction." Revue de l'art 4 (1969), pp. 77–78, 80, fig. 4.
George Heard Hamilton. "The Alfred Stieglitz Collection." Metropolitan Museum Journal 3 (1970), pp. 380–81.
Dickran Tashjian. Skyscraper Primitives: Dada and the American Avant-Garde, 1910–1925. Middletown, Conn., 1975, p. 35, ill. between pp. 90 and 91 (version published in "291").
William A. Camfield. Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times. Princeton, 1979, pp. 80–81, 285, fig. 100.
Jan Thompson. "Picabia and His Influence on American Art, 1913–17." Art Journal 39 (Fall 1979), pp. 17–18, fig. 10.
Maria Lluïsa Borràs. Picabia. New York, 1985, pp. 101, 163, 508, no. 155, fig. 275.
Willard Bohn. "Picabia's 'Mechanical Expression' and the Demise of the Object." Art Bulletin 67 (December 1985), p. 673.
Judi Freeman inThe Dada and Surrealist Word-Image. Exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, 1989, p. 27, fig. 17.
Anna Chave. Constantin Brancusi: Shifting the Bases of Art. New Haven and London, 1993, p. 158, fig. 4.30.
Francis M. Naumann. New York Dada, 1915–23. New York, 1994, pp. 59–60, ill.
Cathy Bernheim. Picabia. Paris, 1995, pp. 79–80.
Pedro Lapa inFrancis Picabia: Antologia/Anthology. Ed. Clara Távora Vilar et al. Exh. cat., Centro Cultural de Belém, Portugal. Belém, 1997, pp. 20–21, 24.
Carole Boulbès. Picabia: Le Saint masqué. Essai sur la peinture érotique de Francis Picabia. Paris, 1998, p. 16.
Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, ed. Picturing Science, Producing Art. New York and London, 1998, pp. 157–60, 164–65, 169–72, 176 n. 28, fig. 4.
Pepe Karmel in Sarah Greenough. Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, D. C., 2000, pp. 210–11, fig. 75.
Danielle Tilkin et al. New York et l'art moderne: Alfred Stieglitz et son cercle (1905–1930). Exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay. Paris, 2004, p. 128, fig. 38 (Spanish ed., 2004).
William Camfield inNew York et l'art moderne: Alfred Stieglitz et son cercle (1905-1930). Exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Paris, 2004, pp. 127–28, fig. 38.
Amelia Jones. Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada. Cambridge, Mass., 2004, pp. 82, 84–85, 87, fig. 2.16.
Jessica Murphy inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, pp. 43, 46, 246–47, no. 17, ill. (color) pp. 46, 246.
Rachel Mustalish inStieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, p. 46.
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