Hauser & Wirth's Picabia Survey Sidesteps Fascist Past

Hauser & Wirth London's exhibition 'Francis Picabia: Expanding Horizons' (21 May – 1 August 2026) traces Picabia's career from 1902 to 1951, presenting him as a Dada provocateur and stylistic chameleon. However, the show glosses over his collaborationist activities during World War II. In the early 1940s, Picabia produced eroticized nudes on the Côte d'Azur while the Nazis occupied France, works compared to the Nordic nude aesthetic favored by the Third Reich. He made anti-Semitic remarks about colleagues, published praise for Vichy leader Marshal Pétain, and after Liberation complained his studio was 'taken by some Jews.' Investigated for collaboration but never charged, he pivoted to abstraction post-war. The exhibition treats this period as just another stylistic chapter, with no critical engagement. The catalogue omits a timeline gap for the war years. Picabia joins a list of artists who collaborated with fascism, including Le Corbusier, André Derain, Jean Cocteau, and Emil Nolde.