Henri Laurens - La jeune fille - image-1
Henri Laurens - La jeune fille - image-2
Henri Laurens - La jeune fille - image-3
Henri Laurens - La jeune fille - image-1Henri Laurens - La jeune fille - image-2Henri Laurens - La jeune fille - image-3

Lot 284 D

Henri Laurens - La jeune fille

Auction 1090 - overview Cologne
31.05.2017, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 80.000 € - 100.000 €

Henri Laurens

La jeune fille
1950

Bronze sculpture Height 38 cm Numbered and monogrammed 'HL' (joined) on the cast-with plinth back left and foundry mark "VALSUANI CIRE PERDUE" back centre. Cast 0/6. - With fine dark brown patina.

Henri Laurens was one of the outstanding sculptors of the 20th century. In addition to his occupation with Cubism, Laurens's sculptural and graphic work primarily focused on persistently dealing with and transforming the human figure artistically.
As a sculptor Henri Laurens was particularly interested in the finding of form, and his nudes are thus always also to be understood as suggested solutions to sculptural problems. A statement made by the artist in 1952 demonstrates how important this conceptual aspect was to him: “Sculpture essentially means taking possession of space, the construction of a thing with negative spaces and volume, mass and void, their variation and contrast, constant reciprocal tensions and, finally, their balance.” (Henri Laurens in “XXième Siècle”, no. 2, January 1952, pp. 73 f., cited in Eduard Trier, Beobachtungen zu Henri Laurens, in: Ausst. Kat. Henri Laurens: Skulpturen, Collagen, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Druckgraphik, Bestandskatalog und Ausstellungskatalog, Oeuvreverzeichnis der Druckgraphik, Sprengel Museum Hanover 1985, p. 12). Through the opening up of the body and the flowing motion of the torso and limbs, Laurens was able to combine empty space and the volume of the material like only a few sculptors.
While Laurens's earlier work primarily explores the formal vocabulary of the Cubism of artists like Picasso, Braque or Gris, the present bronze demonstrates his profound interest in biomorphic form, which is found in the dialogue between volume and space and points to nature's fertile sensuality: “Transition and renewal, alternation of breathing in and out, encountering rising and falling forces. One of Laurens's great creative achievements was that his figures visualise this dialogue of forces as life experience that has become form, that they are not in the one-dimensional state of a point, but are 'sculptural events' which preserve the altogether of the curve of life within their complexity.” (Werner Hofmann, Henri Laurens: Das plastische Werk, Stuttgart 1970, p. 48).

Provenance

Galerie Brusberg, Berlin; Private collection, South Germany

Literature

Werner Hofmann, Henri Laurens. Das plastische Werk, Stuttgart 1970, with full-page illus. p. 211

Exhibitions

Cologne 1955 (Wallraf-Richartz-Museum), Henri Laurens. 1885 - 1954, cat. no. 45; Kaiserslautern 1975 (Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern), Henri Laurens. Skulpturen und Graphik, cat. no. 38; Hanover 1985 (Sprengel Museum), Henri Laurens. Skulpturen, Collagen, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Druckgraphik, cat. no. 56 with full-page illus. (our piece); Lille 1992/1994 (Musée d'art moderne Villeneuve d'Ascq), Henri Laurens. Rétrospective, cat. no. 146 with full-page colour illus.