Gabrielle Buffet has recalled that, when she first met Picabia [in September 1908], he was bored with his past work; small drawings of monstrous figures and abstract designs* flowed from his pen, and he talked animatedly about liberating art, about producing 'painting situated within pure imagination which recreates the world of forms according to one's desire and imagination'.
Though initially astonished by Picabia's application of that idea to painting, her study with Vincent d'Indy had already exposed her to similar theories in music. That fostered a stimulating intellectual rapport between Gabrielle and Francis which flourished alongside a headlong romance.**
As his personal and artistic aims became focused, Picabia took dramatic action to cast off the past and start off anew. In the course of a few months he broke with the Galerie Haussmann, auctioned off all his older paintings, jilted a mistress of long standing, and married Gabrielle Buffet.
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