Collection: Henri Laurens
Henri Laurens (1885 - 1954) Laurens indulged in a wide range of artistic practices but is most readily associated with the pre-war Cubists. After the war, he would come to see the movement's focus on geometric planes as too dogmatic and his body of work acceded more and more the formal and thematic influences of Classical sculpture. He would move away from the sharp-edged fragmentation of Cubism to experiment with more organic, curved shapes which he matched to mythical subject matter. This initiative can be seen historically as part of a wider post-war project to bring about societal stability through a more accessible aesthetic approach. His curved forms, which were an extension of, rather than a rupture with, high modernism, fitted with the artist's radical politics which he believed would be better served by a less-aggressive, more agreeable, form of avant-gardism.