Lot 14 | Henri Laurens | La petite espagnole (Kleine Spanierin)

LAURENS, HENRI
Paris 1885 - 1954

Titel: La petite espagnole (Kleine Spanierin).
Date: 1954 (design).
Technique: Bronze, brown patinated.
Measurement: 25 x 19 x 20cm.
Notation: Monogrammed and numbered on the back right: HL (ligated) 4/6.
Foundry Mark: Foundry mark back left CIRE C. VALSUANI PERDUE.
Number: 4/6.

Provenance:
- Galerie Brusberg, Hannover
- Private collection Lower Saxony

Exhibitions:
- Sprengel Museum, Hanover 1985

Literature:
- Inventory and exhibition catalogue Henri Laurens - Skulpturen, Collagen, Zeichnungen, Aquarelle, Druckgraphik, Sprengel Museum, Hanover 1985, cat. no. 59, p. 130f., ill.
- Cf. Hofmann, Werner/Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry: Henri Laurens - Das plastische Werk, Stuttgart 1970, cat. no. 215, p. 215, ill.

- One of the most important French sculptors
- Beautiful casting with harmonious patina
- Characteristic work in the curvy-round style of the post-war period
- Works of the artist are represented in important museums, e.g. Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Forms, fullness, but also emptiness, especially the occupied space, determine the work of Henri Laurens. The figure of "La petit espagnole", sitting cross-legged with her right hand gently resting in her lap, appears contemplatively introverted. Yet she reaches into her immediate surroundings through her voluptuous, sensuously curved body, so that she fills the room with her presence.
The Paris-born artist (1885-1954) became interested in art at a young age. After training as a stonemason, he attended drawing classes and moved to Montmartre. In the artist scene there he met Georges Braque, and a lifelong friendship grew out of their acquaintance. This relationship also had a lasting influence on Laurens' work, as Braque introduced Laurens to Cubism. In painting, Cubism was brought in by Braques and Picasso, who was also an admirer of Laurens; in sculpture, Laurens' sculptures were paradigmatic for Cubism until the 1930s. But even after the detachment of art from realistic, naturalistic reality, Laurens felt a closeness to nature and figurative representation. Thus, starting in the 1930s, his sculptures become fuller and curvier, organic-biomorphic. The artist preferred to create female nudes, which for him were metaphors for the fertile and growing, the natural. He combines the cubist-geometric with the gently, warmly curved lines. "La petit espagnole", created in the year of the artist's death, is an excellent example of this.