Marmottan monet marie laurencin biography

She had relationships with men and women, [ 3 ] and her art reflected her life, her "balletic wraiths" and "sidesaddle Amazons " providing the art world with her brand of "queer femme with a Gallic twist. She was greatly affected by her separation from the French capital, the unrivaled center of artistic creativity. During the s she worked as an art instructor at a private school.

She lived in Paris until her death. Laurencin's works include paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints. Her work lies outside the bounds of Cubist norms in her pursuit of a specifically feminine aesthetic by her use of pastel colors and curvilinear forms. Originally influenced by Fauvism , she simplified her forms through the influence of the Cubist painters.

Marmottan monet marie laurencin biography

From , her palette consisted mainly of grey, pink, and pastel tones. Her distinctive style developed upon her return to Paris in the s post exile. The muted colours and the geometric patterns inherited from Cubism were replaced by light tones and undulating compositions. And if you realize that, in her soft way, she's constructing a world without men, of female harmony, there's something pretty revolutionary in there as well.

Laurencin continued to explore themes of femininity and what she considered to be feminine modes of representation until her death. Her works include paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints. Laurencin's artistic accomplishments are seen in collections around the world. Founder Masahiro Takano was enamored with Laurencin's sensual and lyrical worldview, and the museum holds over art pieces by her.

Petersburg, and the Tate Gallery in London. January 16, pm. One could easily look at her canvases and see a saccharine world of woodland fairies wearing chiffon. Albert Barnes who had at least four Laurencins. A multimedia artist, Laurencin created paintings and prints, illustrated books, designed costumes and sets for ballet, and did collaborative decorative projects during her five-decade career.

And it all began for her, the story goes, with a teacup. Powered by WordPress. Close the menu Menu. ARTnews Expand the sub menu. Art In America Logo Expand the sub menu. Art Collectors Expand the sub menu. No young artist could have been more fortunate than Marie, to have one's own "publicity agent" in the person of the well-connected Apollinaire who praised and publicized her work, including her among the best of the experimental artists of the time in his critiques written for avant-garde journals.

And with Stein, Laurencin also acquired another admirer of her individual style. Then, in her second creative phase, Marie turned to feminine portraits, employing "an entirely feminine aesthetic," as Apollinaire described it; virginal women with pale, oval-shaped faces, fair hair, and black, almond-shaped "fathomless" eyes. This second phase of Laurencin's long career began when she returned to Paris in ; her most productive period was the two decades between the wars.

From to , Laurencin produced her most typical, and recognizable, work, which reveals her mature style. Marie had found her own artistic genre, and "her mood too shifted to one of lyrical melancholy. She commenced a business arrangement with Paul Rosenberg who exhibited her pictures in his Paris gallery and received large commissions from the sale of her paintings.

He also paid all her bills, relieving her of this banal burden. With her reputation re-established after a single exhibition on her return to Paris, Laurencin was suddenly financially secure. She achieved great success as a portrait artist and painted some of the most fashionable and famous people of the time, including the Baronne Gourgaud, Coco Chanel , Lady Emerald Cunard Maud Cunard , and W.

Somerset Maugham. Coco Chanel disliked her portrait, saying it did not look like her, but as one of Marie's critics remarked, "likeness was never the primary aim of Laurencin's portraiture. The horse remained, for Marie always won artistic debates with her clients. The gentle, dream-like depiction of Lady Cunard hung in her fashionable residence in London and was greatly admired by her society guests.

Laurencin had intended to paint her friend Adrienne Monnier , whose bookstore was one of the literary focal points of Paris, but Adrienne insisted that Marie include her nose in the painting—Laurencin portraits were often "noseless. Preferring to paint slender, willowy young women, Marie charged double for portraits of men—except for Maugham, who was a personal friend.

The Maugham portrait is not one of her more notable paintings, and Laurencin made a gift of it to Maugham; years later, he professed not to care for Laurencin's style, but he kept the painting. Marie also increased her price for those who bored her, and for brunettes since she preferred blondes. And she avoided painting children—they did not arouse her creative senses.

Marie needed to relate to her subjects, to be "in sympathy spiritually" with them. In light of this, it is striking that so many of her portraits of women resemble one another and, as some critics claim, actually look more like the artist than themselves. Laurencin's talent extended beyond portraiture. First performed by the Ballets Russes in Monte Carlo in , it was also a resounding success in Paris and later in London and Berlin.

A revival of the ballet in London in included exact reproductions of Laurencin's set and costumes which had contributed so much to the initial success of the Diaghilev ballet. Other famous artists, including Picasso, Matisse, and Juan Gris, also designed sets—at the time, art was not confined to canvas and stone or to displaying one's work in art galleries.

To many of the Cubists, Symbolists, and others of the s' avant-garde, art was wed to literature and to theater, and their interests were inclusive rather than exclusive. Laurencin's contribution to Les Biches led to further commissions, and she continued to produce stage designs and costumes for over two decades; her last involvement was with Sleeping Beauty for Ballets de Monte Carlo in Laurencin was a multitalented artist, never limited to a single genre to express her imagination and creativity.

Wallpaper, interior decoration , stage settings, costumes, portraits, paintings of flowers and landscapes were all within her realm of art. In the s and s, Marie was one of the three most well-known women in France, along with Colette and Coco Chanel. In , she was able to acquire a country house in Champrosay and three years later purchased a large apartment in Paris.

The Laurencin exhibits attracted admirers and buyers; in addition to portraits, she painted flowers and a few landscapes which attracted additional admirers and buyers. Laurencin also illustrated more than 20 books. Alice, Flanner notes, looked like Laurencin, and the Rabbit wore "a little pink Marie Laurencin hat and looks like a French poodle.

This negative reaction was not widespread, however. Respected and successful, Laurencin taught at an art academy in Paris from to The third, and final, phase of Laurencin's extensive career is regarded by most critics as her "bad" period. Her work then is said to lack the delicacy of earlier periods, with "a much coarser use of form and color.

To a great extent, this is true; Laurencin had developed her own distinctive style, her own vision of reality, and she changed little in the depiction of her chosen subjects. Her artistic genre had brought her international recognition and financial rewards; her success was not based on imitating "popular" styles nor on following or reacting to modern trends.

Instead, Laurencin insisted that she painted nature as she saw it, that she was a "natural painter," not an "instinctive" one. Two years later, Europe was embroiled in another war, but Laurencin risked her life to remain in Paris—she wanted to complete paintings she was working on. Invasion and occupation by the Germans was obviously less odious to her than living in exile again.

Paris was her home, her artistic milieu, and a German presence could be tolerated better than a lonely, isolated existence in a foreign land. Like Natalie Barney, Marie regarded women as victims of war as much as men were, and she endured the privations suffered by civilians in Paris during the bleak years of Nazi occupation, — The Germans requisitioned her large apartment, and she was forced to move into a smaller one and rent a studio.

Despite the hardships, Laurencin continued to paint during the war, to design sets, and to exhibit her work. In , a book of memories and reminiscences was published, entitled Le Carnet des Nuits literally, The Notebook of Nights. Laurencin suffered from a variety of ailments and serious bouts of depression for many years, but she continued to paint until she was nearly Following the liberation of France and the end of the war, Marie tried, unsuccessfully, to reclaim her apartment.

On the left is a violinist, playing music for the figure beside her, who dances. At the centre, a seated woman, facing the dancer, turns to look back over her shoulder toward the viewer. On the right, another woman appears in motion, carrying a bowl of fruit under her right arm and reaching down with her left to stroke the nose of a doe.

The limbs of the women are fluid, following the drape of their dresses, and their bodies are outlined with heavy black lines. The Young Girls is illustrative of Laurencin's skill in experimenting with different artistic styles whilst developing her own interests and visual language. The posing of the four women and their flat, mask-like faces are strongly suggestive of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , while the flat planes of the village behind call to mind Braque's Houses at L'Estaque This painting, however, differentiates itself from these influences through the use of the four women to suggest a fertile sphere of feminine creativity, suggested both through the circle created by the figures' positioning and through the presence of the doe, a symbol of femininity and naturalness that Laurencin frequently employed.

The performance, in which the women are both participants and observers, is reminiscent of those Laurencin regularly attended at the home of Natalie Barney and The Young Girls can be read as a contribution to this tradition of lesbian self-fashioning and as a celebration of an independent female realm. This portrait shows Maire Laurencin and Cecilia de Madrazo, a collector and friend of the artist, with the head of a dog poking up between the pair.

Marie Laurencin, on the left, is shown wearing a pink dress with short hair that conceals her ears and forehead; her cheeks and lips are pink, while her skin is grey, and her black eyes look down and out of the painting. On the right, Cecilia plays with the dog, looking down toward it and reaching a finger towards its extended snout.

Her skin is almost white, with pink lips and cheeks, and she wears a grey dress and has a white hat, with large blue bow, atop her dark hair. The backdrop, rendered with little detail, is grey and there is a pink curtain at the right edge of the painting; the color scheme is very limited, with Laurencin utilising only grey, pink, blue and very small amounts of beige.

This painting is emblematic of Laurencin's work, which has been both appreciated and criticised for its deliberately feminine aesthetic, with the painter prioritising pastel colors and soft edges. The figures appear peaceful and charming, in possession of conventional female virtues including beauty, taste and docility. Laurencin embraced the idea that women and her paintings could be decorative, but critical dismissal of 'decorative' and anti-intellectual art meant that male artists saw her work as embodying feminine weakness and early feminist critics felt her representation of womanhood played into such arguments.

Laurencin's unashamed embrace of visual pleasure, however, and the development of an aesthetic that celebrated female softness, elegance and sweetness is itself a radical position. This painting, moreover, presents these qualities as part of a creative process in which the masculine is utterly unnecessary, with women presented as both artist and subject; Laurencin's focused downward glance, as if at a canvas, reminds the viewer of her profession.

The Fan features a pink shelf that holds two images of women, one in a rectangular frame and the other in a round frame, against a pink and grey background. The portrait to the left, in the larger, rectangular frame, shows a woman and a dog in greyscale accented by a pale blue ribbon, hat and curtains, while the round frame at the centre of the painting shows a woman presumed to be Marie Laurencin herself, though it is unclear if this is a portrait or a mirror.

The lower right corner of the image is dominated by the folds of a fan, rendered in grey and white, that is cut off at the canvas's edge. The pastel hues and soft, apparently boneless figures are recognisably of Laurencin's mature style. The positioning of the fan in this image, as if held by a figure gazing at the frames on the shelf, implicates the viewer in a narrative that remains vague.

The portraits on the shelf are arranged such that the figures within the frames appear to meet the viewer's gaze; the arrangement and display of such portraits suggests an intimacy between their subjects and the unseen figure holding the fan, in whose place the viewer is positioned. The Fan derives its emotional pull through this intrigue and ambiguity, raising questions as to the identity of both the subjects and owner of these portraits and their relationships.

It has been suggested that the woman in the rectangular frame is Nicole Groult, a dressmaker with whom Laurencin likely had a romantic relationship. The display of portraits provokes - through the representation of figures presumed to be elsewhere - a sense of longing that can, given the context of exile in which it was created, read as a commentary on absence and longing.

Spanish Dancers shows three women, in blue, pink and white, dancing with a horse and dog against a grey and black backdrop with subdued hints of green. On the left, the woman in blue extends her leg and points her toe, her body extending the height of the canvas, with one hand holding the edge of her grey hat while the other reaches back toward the horse that is partially obscured by her body.

The dancer on the right side of the canvas, in white, also strokes the horse's mane, while the dog at the centre of the image leaps up toward her hand. In the foreground, a woman in a pink, tutu-like dress with bent legs, who has been described as Laurencin herself, extends her hand toward the dancer in white and leans back, turning her face toward the viewer and directing her gaze toward the base of the canvas.

The eyes of all three women are rendered simply, as thick black lines with dots at the centre, and there is little modelling or use of line to indicate the edges of faces, hair or fabrics, creating connection between the women and animals whilst contributing to the sense of fluid motion within the dance. Spanish Dancers sees Laurencin combining her signature color scheme with a more ambitious composition, likely influenced by her time in Spain, where she completed a number of sketches and smaller paintings on the same theme.

Laurencin's style in this painting imbues the dance with particular characteristics. The softness of the figures and the limited color palette creates a sense of harmony, reinforced by the overlapping of the animals and women within the composition; the horse's large eye, close to that of the woman in blue, suggests gentleness and trust.

Laurencin, as is typical across her oeuvre, does not develop the painting's setting, the shadowed backdrop contributing to the construction of a closed world in which dancers and animals are allied, content and self-sufficient. Spanish Dancers celebrates the ephemeral, with the soft edges of the figures and the undulating lines of limbs and fabrics suggestive of dance's fleeting nature, echoing and alluding to the impermanence of sensual pleasures.

This portrait of Coco Chanel is typical of Marie Laurencin's commissions, in which she often paired women with animals and dressed her sitters in colored scarves. Chanel is shown seated, her head slightly tilted and propped on her hand, with a pale poodle on her lap. It is unclear where Chanel's flesh ends and her dress begins; her pale outfit is accented with dark black and blue scarves, while the seat behind her is a textured pink and blue.

She appears relaxed and her eyes and mouth, neutral and expressionless, suggest that she is daydreaming or preoccupied by her thoughts; the poodle's expression is similarly calm. On the right, in the background, is a dove descending toward Chanel and another dog, in the shadows, leaping toward it. Chanel commissioned this portrait in , having become acquainted with Laurencin when both were designing costumes for Sergei Diaghilev.

The painting, upon completion, was rejected by Chanel, who felt that Laurencin's woman did not bear enough of a likeness to her. This observation can be made of many of Laurencin's portraits; she did not deny it, but claimed that physical likeness was unimportant. Laurencin's portraits became simpler as she matured, with women stripped down to dreamlike figures that suggested a way of seeing the world in which emotion, rather than verifiable fact, was primary.