Provenance

Mr. Frank Kolodny

American

Explore Selected Works

Two gears with interlocking sprockets, painted in shades of cobalt, slate, and sky blue and shown against a black background, nearly fill this abstracted, vertical work. A large gear, situated to our upper right, takes up most of the composition and extends off the top and right edges. It is marked with a number 2, and the much smaller gear, to our lower left, is labeled with a gold number 1 at its center. Circles and straight and curving lines cluster around and over the gears, and are drawn in metallic gold against the dark background but continue in black where they cross the gears. An inscription in gold capital letters across the top reads, “MACHINE TOURNEZ VITE.” In the lower left, it reads, “1 FEMME” and “2 HOMME.” The artist signed the work in lower right in metallic gold letters: “Picabia.”
Francis Picabia, Machine tournez vite (Machine Turn Quickly), 1916/1918, brush and ink with watercolor and shell gold over a 19th-century French lithographic illustration; laid down on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1989.10.1

Machine tournez vite (Machine Turn Quickly)

Francis Picabia · 1916/1918 · brush and ink with watercolor and shell gold over a 19th-century French lithographic illustration; laid down on canvas ·  Accession ID  1989.10.1