Picabia, Francis

Picabia played a pivotal role in modern art as a Dada provocateur in the avant-garde circles of Paris, New York, and Barcelona in the 1910s and ’20s. His sardonic mechanical portraits steeped in sexual innuendo portray man as a dysfunctional machine with loose gears and missing parts. In Résonateur—one of Picabia’s most characteristic Dada works—rudimentary lines, coils, and letters suggest a cavity resonator, a hollow metallic container for electromagnetic waves.