Gabriële Buffet-Picabia (1881–1985)

Gabriële Buffet-Picabia was born in Fontainebleau, France. Her parents were Laure (Hugueteau de Chaillé) and Alphée Buffet, a senior cavalry officer. She grew up with a brother who became a painter. She intended to be a professional musician, and studied at the Schola Cantorum, a private conservatory in Paris. In 1908, at age 27, she met painter Francis Picabia while studying composition in Berlin and the couple fell in love. They married in 1909 and had four children. She became an essayist and influential art critic, specifically within the Dada movement. She was a muse to her husband, encouraging his desire to produce more abstract art. She also was a lover of Marcel Duchamp. She published a memoir of Swiss writer Arthur Cravan, whom she met with many other avant-garde artists in New York City during World War I. In 1941, during World War II, Buffet-Picabia was a member of the French Resistance in Paris, alongside Samuel Beckett, Mary Reynolds, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, and others. Her studio served as a safe house for downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war. Her daughter Jeanine was also in the Resistance and the two of them avoided arrest. After the Germans arrested her older daughter, Marie, who was not involved in the Resistance, Buffet-Picabia cared for her grandchildren left alone in Lyon, while continuing her work. Later, after her group was betrayed to the Nazis, she hiked over the Pyrenees to Spain to be evacuated to the UK. Although she played a central role in the art world at the beginning of the 20th century, she remained largely a footnote in history for a long time. In 2017, her great-granddaughters Anne and Claire Berest told her story in their biography entitled Gabriële.