| Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 | |
|---|---|
| French: Nu descendant un escalier n° 2 | |
 | |
| Artist | Marcel Duchamp |
| Year | 1912 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 147 cm × 89.2 cm (57+7⁄8 in × 35+1⁄8 in) |
| Location | Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia |
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (French: Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) is a 1912 painting by Marcel Duchamp. The work is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time. Before its first presentation at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants in Paris it was rejected by the Cubists as being too Futurist. It was then exhibited with the Cubists at Galeries Dalmau's Exposició d'Art Cubista, in Barcelona, 20 April – 10 May 1912.[1] The painting was subsequently shown, and ridiculed, at the 1913 Armory Show in New York City.
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was reproduced by Guillaume Apollinaire in his 1913 book, Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques. It is now in the Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[2]
- ^ Roger Allard, Sur quelques peintre, Les Marches du Sud-Ouest, June 1911, pp. 57-64. In Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, A Cubism Reader, Documents and Criticism, 1906-1914, The University of Chicago Press, 2008
- ^ The Philadelphia Museum of Art