Jean Crotti

Around 1910 he began to experiment with Orphism, an offshoot of Cubism, and a style that would be enhanced by his association in New York City with Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia.

In 1916, he exhibited Orphist-like paintings, several of which had religious titles that also included his Portrait of Marcel Duchamp and his much discussed Les Forces MÈcaniques de l'amour Mouvement, created by using found objects.

Over the ensuing years, he would create numerous paintings and be the subject for several solo exhibitions at major galleries in England, France, Germany, and the United States.

Jean Crotti's heirs donated his personal papers to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, where they can be consulted by researchers.

[2] In 2011, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art showed an exhibition, Inhabiting Abstraction, including important examples from every significant phase and development in the realm of abstraction that Crotti explored, as well as one-of-a-kind works such as "Parterre de reve" (1920), in which he framed his painting palette and then signed it.