Marie Laurencin

French, 1883-1956

Marie Laurencin was a French painter, printmaker, and designer whose work developed in close dialogue with the early 20th-century avant-garde. Born in Paris, she began her artistic training in porcelain painting at Sèvres before enrolling at the Académie Humbert, where she refined her skills in drawing. By 1907, she was exhibiting solo and had become embedded in the artistic circles of Montmartre, forming significant connections with key figures such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, with whom she shared a formative and complex relationship.

Her early work intersected with the rise of Cubism, but Laurencin maintained a distinct visual language, prioritizing contour, flattened form, and an emphasis on figuration of women. After World War I, during which she lived in exile in Spain due to her marriage to a German national, Laurencin returned to Paris and established a successful studio practice. The 1920s and 1930s marked a period of growing recognition, including commissions for ballet and book illustration, as well as regular participation in major exhibitions across Europe and the United States.

Laurencin’s work resisted dominant narratives of modernism, favoring an introspective and stylized approach. She cultivated a singular aesthetic that, while often categorized alongside Cubism or Fauvism, stood apart for its focus on identity, intimacy, and female-presentation. Today, her legacy is increasingly reexamined in light of feminist art history, with her work held in institutions such as the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Centre Pompidou, and the Barnes Foundation, which hosted a major retrospective in 2023.