Francis Picabia is born in Paris, January 22, 1879, 82 rue des Petits Champs, the same house where he dies, November 30, 1953. During the seventy four intervening years, Picabia explores most of the artistic movements of his time, a feat as exceptional as the epoch itself.
Picabia' Atelier	His childhood is as materially comfortable as it is emotionally troubled. “Between my head and my hand,” he says in 1922, “there is always the figure of death.” As a child, he is l'enfant terrible, later he becomes the perfect rastaquouère, the Joker or flashy adventurer, which is the public side of his complex personality.
Picabia around 1885	An only child, François Marie Martinez Picabia is the son of a Cuban born Spaniard, Francisco Vicente Martinez Picabia, and a Frenchwoman, Marie Cécile Davanne; a marriage of the Spanish aristocracy and the French bourgeoisie. Picabia is seven when his mother dies of tuberculosis. A year later,  1887, his maternal grandmother dies, leaving the child alone with his father, chancellor to the Cuban Embassy; his bachelor uncle, Maurice Davanne, curator of the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève; and his grandfather, Alphonse Davanne, a wealthy businessman and devoted amateur photographer, reportedly a friend of Daguerre. Francis escapes the solitude and boredom of this “womanless” house through drawing.

            In response to his grandfather's prediction that color photography will eventually replace painting, Picabia retorts, “You can photograph a landscape, but not the forms I have in my head.” -- a fundamental theme which unifies Picabia's aesthetic convictions, among the most heterodox of this century.

Very early he develops an aggressively independent character; at the same time, his talent as an artist appears. After a tumultuous primary education, Picabia begins his artistic apprenticeship at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in 1895 where he studies under Corman, Humbert and Wallet. Braque and Marie Laurencin are fellow students, Van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec recent graduates. 1899 marks Picabia's debut in the Salon des Artistes Français with the painting, Une rue aux Martigues. It isn't until after 1902 that the influence of Pissarro, and especially Sisley, is felt and with it Picabia's Impressionist period flowers. He begins exhibiting at the more liberal Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants as well as the avant garde galerie of Berthe Wei1l. Success and notoriety follow. Picabia signs a contract with the prestigious Galerie Haussmann. In 1905, Danthon, proprietor of the galerie, mounts the first of three one‑man shows and a prolific period follows where he perfects his Impressionism. Picabia's approach aligns him to the Symbolist-Synthesist concepts of the late 19th century where art is not considered a copy of nature, but rather the artist's emotional experience of it as seen in a synthesis of form and color with subjective expression.