MARIE LAURENCIN

Early Years

Laurencin was born in Paris and raised by her mother, Pauline-Mélanie Laurencin, in a household that nurtured her artistic ambitions. She studied porcelain painting at Sèvres before enrolling at the Académie Humbert in Montmartre, where she shifted her focus to oil painting and met influential artists, including Georges Braque. Laurencin became part of the city’s avant-garde circles, developing friendships with Pablo Picasso and poet Guillaume Apollinaire, with whom she had a six-year relationship. Her early career included exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne, and she was the only woman to participate in the first Cubist exhibition in Spain at Galeries Dalmau in 1912.

Marie Laurencin Artworks

Laurencin’s artworks are celebrated for their delicate, dreamlike depictions of women, animals, and mythic scenes rendered in soft pastel tones and fluid lines. Her approach to painting was shaped by, but ultimately diverged from, Cubism, as she developed a uniquely feminine aesthetic that foregrounded female companionship, queerness, and the decorative.

The Paris Avant-Garde and Cubism

In the early 1900s, Laurencin was closely associated with the Cubist movement, exhibiting alongside Picasso, Braque, and Metzinger. However, she soon distanced herself from Cubism’s rigid geometry, favouring simplified forms, flattened space, and a palette dominated by pinks, greys, and blues. Seminal works from this period include Les jeunes filles (1910–11) and Femme à l’éventail (1912).

Sapphic Modernity and the Feminine World

After World War I and a period of exile in Spain, Laurencin returned to Paris, where she developed her mature style. Her paintings from the 1920s and 1930s—such as Women in the Forest (1920), The Shepherdesses (1922), and Portrait de Mademoiselle Chanel (1923) — are marked by ethereal female figures, gentle animals, and motifs of music and dance. Laurencin’s works subtly referenced lesbian desire and queer intimacy, creating what has been described as a ‘sapphic modernity’ that challenged the male-dominated narratives of modern art.

Decorative Arts, Portraiture, and Later Work

Laurencin was also active as a book illustrator, set and costume designer, and portraitist, with commissions from figures such as Coco Chanel and Lady Cunard. Her distinctive style, with its lyrical melancholy and focus on female harmony, remained consistent through her later years, even as critics debated its relevance in the changing art world of the 1940s and 1950s.

Public Commissions

• Set and costume designs for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, including Les Biches (1924)
• Decorative panels for the French Pavilion, Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (1925)

Awards and Accolades

• Legion of Honour, France (1937)
• Marie Laurencin Museum, Nagano, Japan, founded in her honour (1983)

Exhibitions

Marie Laurencin has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important institutions. A selection of important exhibitions is provided below.

Solo Exhibitions

• Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio (2024)
• Marie Laurencin: An Eye for Her Time, Artizon Museum, Tokyo (2023–2024)
• Marie Laurencin, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (1983)
• Marie Laurencin Retrospective, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris (1991)

Group Exhibitions

• Armory Show, New York, Chicago, Boston (1913)
• Salon des Indépendants, Paris (multiple years from 1907)
• Salon d’Automne, Paris (multiple years from 1911)
• Inventing Modern Women: Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Jewish Museum, New York (2023)
• Women in Abstraction, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021)

Critical Reception

Marie Laurencin’s practice has been featured in leading magazines, including The Nation, Observer, Artsy, and AWARE.

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Ocula | 2025