Marie laurencin group of artists new york

By Karen Chernick. Born in Paris, Laurencin was the illegitimate daughter of a seamstress, who raised her solo, and a father who sponsored an upper middle-class education for her. When Laurencin was a teenager, her mother asked her to paint a teacup, and her drawing skills showed enough promise for her to study art formally. An early Laurencin painting was Self-Portrait , a subject she returned to throughout her career.

Marie laurencin biography

By spring she had met Picasso, who took an interest in her work and introduced her to Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet who chronicled Cubism. Laurencin and Apollinaire were romantically involved from until , and he appears in some of her group portraits from this period. A year later, in another group portrait titled Apollinaire and His Friends Apollinaire et ses amis with Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, Olivier, Picasso, and poets Marguerite Gillot and Maurice Cremnitz, Laurencin still dominates, this time in the right foreground.

Apollinaire kept this painting after his relationship with Laurencin fizzled, hanging it above his bed for the rest of his life. Laurencin experimented with Cubism, but on her own terms. Ultimately, though, Laurencin felt that her ties to the Cubists kept her back. Her break with Apollinaire and the beginning of World War I led to a marked separation from the group, and it was during this time that she developed her distinct style.