

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE FRENCH COLLECTION
After the Transparences, which doubtless reflect the confused feelings of this period, Picabia committed himself to the Dimensionism movement. A refuge from a motley avant-garde intrigued by the new concepts of space-time derived from Einstein’s theories, Dimensionism aspired to the advent of an absolutely new art: an art where the four dimensions of space incorporate the frame of the painting.
Following the Portrait de Marlène Dietrich (1938) where the spatial construction is more superficial, Les deux masques is probably the most perfect example of a plunge into unfathomable dimensions. If the interlocked faces emerging from the black depths can be seen as that of a man and a woman, then the plunge is all the more vertiginous and beautiful.