Francis Picabia is difficult to grasp artistically. An exhibition of his portraits of women is currently on display in a Berlin gallery, a wonderful jumble of styles, moods and artistic positions.
Berlin is a fun city full of huge art treasures, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be entirely comfortable with them. The Gemäldegalerie, for example, seems like a well-kept secret on many days. There are exhibitions here that you would have to queue up for in Paris or New York, but in Berlin they are almost silently lost in the normal noise of the city. Many people don’t even know that Nefertiti is permanently on display in Mitte. And since the Gallery Weekend at the end of April, without much fuss being made about it, a gallery in Charlottenburg has been hosting an exhibition of Picabia works of a variety that has rarely, if ever, been seen in Germany.