© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018
(

Kunsthalle Mannheim / Cem Yücetas

)

La femme à l'éventail

Frau mit Fächer
Woman with Fan
1921

Henri Laurens

(1885-1954)

Material / Technik
terracotta
Kategorie des Exponats
Skulptur
Gattung
Relief
bust
Erwerbungsjahr
1985
Maße
41,00 cm x 30,00 cm x 11,00 cm
Location

Hector-Bau > Ebene 2 > Schaudepot

Intro

The »Woman with Fan« originates from Laurens’s Cubist period, which began in the 1910s and was succeeded by voluminous organic forms in the 1920s. At this stage, Laurens pursued a simplification and clarification of his formal language in sculptures, reliefs, and collages. Like his friends Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963) in their paintings, he began experimenting with basic geometrical forms (cuboids, spheres, etc.) during this period, as this female bust with its frontal orientation clearly shows. The head in particular has a block-like appearance, while the small mouth represented by a notch and the almond-shaped eye lend it a certain elegance. Head, neck and upper chest, hair and fan are formed from abstract, albeit recognizable elements, which combine to form a harmonious whole. For Laurens, however, the aim is not a faithful reproduction of nature. Instead, his female bust can be understood as an attempt to explore basic three-dimensional elements such as the cuboid, along with their relationships to one another and to the viewer, through the medium of sculpture.

Creditline

Acquired with funds from the Wilhelm Müller Foundation, Mannheim, 1985

Inhalt und Themen
portrait
abstraction
cubism
woman
geometric abstraction
single figure
nude
fan
hemisphere
cuboid
smooth (surface)
blunt
angular
Beige

Werke von Henri Laurens

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