No 410, Henri Laurens ”Femme à l'Oiseau” (detail).

French cubism – Laurens' sculpture ”Femme à l'Oiseau”

Modern Art + Design. Viewing: 17–21 May. Open: Mon–Fri 11–18, Sat–Sun kl 11–17. Sale: 22 May start 12.00 CEST.
Address: Bukowskis, Berzelii Park 1 in Stockholm. Read more about the auction here >

Henri Laurens was a close friend to both Braque and Picasso and he was deeply impacted by cubism during the early 1900. Laurens developed a strong cubistic idiom from the human shape, especially the female, that became to be his sculptural signum.

Around the beginning of 1930s Laurens combined the cubistic idiom with the organic shape and allow sensualism to conquer over all theories and ideal of styles. The first time the Swedish audience got an opportunity to make acquaintance with Laurens was in an influential group exhibition with Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Henri Laurens whom together toured in Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm in 1938. Gallery Samlaren, which was run by the proactive Agnes Widlund and Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, where Gösta Ohlson reigned, organized several exhibition with Laurens, both separately and together with the above mentioned artist colleagues.

The auction’s ”Femme à l’Oiseau” was purchased at Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet’s exhibition "Gilioli, Laurens, Picasso” in 1958. In an earlier exhibition catalogue from 1952, when the gallery only exhibited Henri Laurens, the famous art dealer Daniel Henry Kahnweiler (who early exhibited Picasso and Braque) wrote following about Laurens: ”Should I finally say something about the calm worthiness in his way of life in a small house in an ”impasse”, where luscious tree is bent over the faubourg ground; if his simple and smiling optimism impose those failures that has not been spared him; about the gentleness in his sweet brown eyes? This modest man with his serene wisdom is the biggest sculptor in France today."

Laurens atelier with the sculpture Femme à l’Oiseau in the background in plaster.

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