During the 1930s became a close friend of and received encouragement from the modernist novelist Gertrude Stein, painting a portrait of her in 1933. In 1940, he married Olga Mohler on 14 June, the same day that the Nazis seized Paris. Shortly after, he moved to the South of France, where his work took a surprising turn: he produced a series of paintings based on the nude glamour photos in French "girlie" magazines like Paris Sex-Appeal, in a garish style which appears to subvert traditional, academic nude painting. Some of these went to an Algerian merchant who sold them, and so it passed that Picabia came to decorate brothels across North Africa under the Occupation. thumb|left|Francis Picabia, Francis chante le Coq, 391, n. 14, Nov. 1920 Before the end of World War II, he returned to Paris, where he resumed abstract painting and writing poetry. A large retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris in the spring of 1949. Picabia died in Paris in 1953 and was interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre.
During the 1930s became a close friend of and received encouragement from the modernist novelist Gertrude Stein, painting a portrait of her in 1933. In 1940, he married Olga Mohler on 14 June, the same day that the Nazis seized Paris. Shortly after, he moved to the South of France, where his work took a surprising turn: he produced a series of paintings based on the nude glamour photos in French "girlie" magazines like Paris Sex-Appeal, in a garish style which appears to subvert traditional, academic nude painting. Some of these went to an Algerian merchant who sold them, and so it passed that Picabia came to decorate brothels across North Africa under the Occupation. thumb|left|Francis Picabia, Francis chante le Coq, 391, n. 14, Nov. 1920 Before the end of World War II, he returned to Paris, where he resumed abstract painting and writing poetry. A large retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris in the spring of 1949. Picabia died in Paris in 1953 and was interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre.