Richter on Picabia's arrival in Zurich in 1918

Picabia's first appearance, plying us all with champagne and whisky in the Elite Hotel, impressed us in every possible way. He had wit, wealth, poetry and a Goya head set directly on his shoulders with no intervening neck ... A globetrotter in the middle of a global war! ...

An artistic temperament which demanded spontaneous self-expression was matched in him with an intellect that could no longer see a 'meaning' in this world at all. He was, at one and the same time, a creative artist, compelled to go on creating, and a sceptic, who was aware of the total pointlessness of all this creative activity, and whose Cartesian intellect ruled out all hope ...

Picabia confronted us with a radical belief in unbelief, a total contempt for art, which proclaimed that any further involvement with the 'communication of inner experiences' would be sheer humbug ... Over and above this, there was an urge to deny that there is any sense or meaning in life as such, a rejection of art in so far as it constitutes an affirmation of life ...

I met Picabia only a few times, but every time was like an experience of death. He was very strange, very magnetic, challenging and intimidating at the same time.