Henri Laurens - Deux Femmes - image-1

Lot 330 D

Henri Laurens - Deux Femmes

Auction 1099 - overview Cologne
01.12.2017, 18:00 - Modern Art
Estimate: 70.000 € - 90.000 €

Henri Laurens

Deux Femmes
1930

Bronze relief 50 x 50 cm Monogrammed 'HL' (joined) lower right and with designated cast number. - Label of Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris, verso. Artist's name, title, year, cast number etc. inscribed thereon in handwriting. Cast 2/6. - Reddish-brown greenish patina. - Suspension device verso.

Realised according to a sculpturally classical figural conception and with the engraved details of the facial features depicted in a reductive manner, these two interlocked female nudes sit facing one another within a square frame, nearly bursting its narrow dimensions. Cubist-like abbreviated forms open up the pictorial space and locate the scene at the seashore - as is often the case in Henri Laurens's work. Interestingly, the crest of a wave forms the upper edge of the work and thus frees the motif from the square of the frame out into the idea of an infinite space.
In the early 1930s musical and natural influences led Laurens to further develop the relationship between figure and space in his sculptural work. His choice of material shifted from plaster and terracotta to bronze at that time.
Laurens himself has described his way of working: “When I begin a sculpture, I have only a vague idea of what I wish to make. For example, I have the idea of a woman or of something that has to do with the sea. Before my sculpture is a depiction of some thing, it is a sculptural fact, more precisely: a series of sculptural events, of products of my imagination, of responses to the demands of construction. Seen on the whole, that is everything that makes the work what it is.“ (cited in: Werner Hofmann, Henri Laurens: Das plastische Werk, Stuttgart 1970, p. 31).

Provenance

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris; Private collection, South Germany

Exhibitions

Karlsruhe 1964 (Badischer Kunstverein), Pablo Picasso - Henri Laurens. Skulpturen, Radierungen, Lithographien, cat. no. 18 with illus.; Paris 1967 (Grand Palais), Henri Laurens. Exposition de la donation aux Musées Nationaux, cat. no. 21 with full-page illus.