CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/19/2016

Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction

"What I like is to invent, to imagine, to make of myself at every moment a new man, and then, to forget him, to forget everything." So wrote Francis Picabia, subject of the major MoMA retrospective opening on Monday—the first large-scale exhibition of this profoundly innovative, shape-shifting, yet largely unknown artist's work in the United States since 1970. Featured image is the nearly 10x10-foot painting, "Udnie (Young American Girl; Dance)" from 1913, which definitively surpasses the limits of Cubist easel painting, according to essayist George Baker. To see more of our holiday gift book favorites for 2016, continue to our Holiday Gift Guide.