Marie Laurencin

Birth: October 31, 1883 - Paris, France

Death: June 8, 1956 - Paris, France

Marie Laurencin was a French painter, printmaker, and stage designer known for her delicate portraits of elegant, vaguely melancholic women.

From 1903 to 1904 Marie Laurencin studied art at the Humbert Academy in Paris. Among her fellow students was Georges Braque, who, with Pablo Picasso, soon developed the style of painting known as Cubism. The art dealer Clovis Sagot introduced Marie Laurencin to Pablo Picasso in 1907, and she consequently became involved in the avant-garde scene of the Cubists. Although Marie Laurencin exhibited with the Cubist artists, she did not herself exploit the movement’s expression. Her paintings typically are stylized depictions of pale, dark-eyed women and girls painted in pastel colors.

The American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein, an important patron of avant-garde artists, was one of the first buyers of Marie Laurencin’s work.

Marie Laurencin illustrated several books, including a 1930 edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

* Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Marie Laurencin". Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Oct. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Laurencin. Accessed 6 January 2023.