After World War II, Picabia returned to Paris—and to abstraction. Égoïsme (Selfishness) exemplifies Picabia’s persistently unorthodox approach to art-making during this period, in both its subject and facture. The work is dominated by a white and beige phallic form on a dark background surrounded by vividly colored circles. An underlying composition lurks beneath the painting’s thick, crusty surface. The trace of an earlier signature is visible in the lower left corner, suggesting that Picabia may have added to the painting following its first exhibition, at the Galerie des Deux-Îles, in Paris, in November 1948. In that exhibition’s brochure, the writer Michel Seuphor noted, “Picabia has rediscovered the juice of the Dada period, the same careless grace. The same painting-anti-painting that is real creation.” The wood frame on the work bears traces of paint, indicating that Picabia at some point revisited it while it was already framed; this highlights his characteristic disregard for conventional notions of finish, a persistent through-line in his career.

Picabia’s postwar return to abstraction placed him in the context of a younger generation of Paris-based artists associated with Art Informel, some of whom greatly admired the older artist’s work. Picabia befriended a number of them and participated in the group exhibition HWPSMTB, at the Galerie Colette Allendy, in April 1948, alongside Hans Hartung, Wols, François Stahly, Georges Mathieu, Michel Tapié, and Camille Bryen. During the opening, however, Picabia removed his works from the show, reportedly dissatisfied with their placement. This gesture seemed to bear out his statement in “Antimystical Explanations,” authored for that exhibition’s catalogue: “I am failure’s success. I desire neither result, nor goal.”

For Gwendolyn P. Boevé-Jones and Christel van Hees’ essay on Égoïsme, see mo.ma/picabia_conservation.