Henri Laurens was born into a family of workers in Paris, where he studied art and ultimately became a sculptor and illustrator. In 1911, he met George Braque and was...
Henri Laurens was born into a family of workers in Paris, where he studied art and ultimately became a sculptor and illustrator. In 1911, he met George Braque and was introduced to Cubism, going on to be one of the pioneering sculptors in the movement. Two years later, he exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants and later met Pablo Picasso, with whom, according to Françoise Gilot, he had a somewhat uneasy relationship.
From 1915 to about 1919, Laurens made assemblage Cubist sculptures out of wood and metal in the manner of Picasso, though his work had a more finished quality to it. One of these early assemblages sold in November 2023 at Sotheby’s for $1 million. By the 1920s Laurens had begun to work in terra cotta, sometimes painted, but as he refined his idea of Cubism and he developed an interest in what Christopher Green calls a ‘Cubist call to order’, he began to leave his sculptures unpainted. He developed an interest in more Classically-inspired freestanding work and women were a recurring theme in Laurens sculptures, in which he sought explore the relation between volumes and vacuums in space.
Picasso would go on to acquire one edition of Femme en chemise and, in the 1950s, adorned it with his own patterns in India ink, remaking it into his Femme debout. Gilot would recall a meeting with Laurens:
'Laurens liked Picasso but better, I think, from a distance than at close range. He always greeted Pablo by saying something like, "What a pleasure to see you," but he said it so uncertainly that we were persuaded he wasn't quite so pleased as he claimed... A year or two later, after Laurens had been ill with a pulmonary congestion, the doctor sent him for a vacation to Magagnosc, not far above Vallauris. While he was there we called on him, and for the first time he seemed delighted to see Pablo. I think it was because he wasn't in his studio. Most of the painters and sculptors Pablo called on were a little uneasy when Pablo was in their ateliers, perhaps because Pablo often said, "When there's anything to steal, I steal"' (F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, Toronto and London, 1964, p. 317).
Have a sculpture acquired by Picasso and remade into something new is perhaps one of the greater compliments Picasso could have given to Laurens as an artist.