"Francis Picabia was an organizing member of the Salon de la Section d'or, exhibiting a group of 13 paintings there, including this large square canvas that testifies to his assimilation of Cubism and Futurism. This rhythmic and colourful evocation reflects the memory of a religious procession observed during a trip to Spain. The barely discernible motif of nuns dressed in black and white is fragmented into irregular planes that build up in the centre of the painting. The critic Maurice Raynal compared this to the poetry of Mallarmé, which cannot be understood on a first reading. Apollinaire likened it to Orphic Cubism, or "pure painting", an abstract idiom analogous to music. The painting caused outrage at the 1913 New York Armory Show, establishing his reputation in the USA as the highly provocative leader of an artistic school."
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