Francis Picabia: The Art of Never Being the Same

Changing styles as one might change lives. Francis Picabia almost made it a manifesto, moving through Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and abstraction without ever allowing himself to be confined by a movement. Irreverent, unpredictable and cosmopolitan, he moved in the circles of Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso, making reinvention the driving force of his art. In Milan, Palazzo Reale retraces his extraordinary journey with Picabia. Opening the Doors of the Night, the most extensive exhibition ever dedicatd to the artist in Italy. More than 170 works from museums and international collections, accompanied by photographs, letters and personal documents, reveal an artist who defied classification. Curated by his great-granddaughter Anne Berest Picabia, the exhibition abandons conventional chronology to follow the obsessions that fuelled his imagination: love, music and dance, his Spanish roots, war and the pleasure of collective creation. Linking them all is the night, a realm of freedom and metamorphosis. A particularly seductive way to encounter an artist who spent his life escaping definitions.