original text : (Automatic translation)
Marie LAURENCIN (1883-1956). Watercolor on paper. Laurencin's works include paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints. She is known as one of the few female Cubist painters, with Sonia Delaunay, Marie Vorobieff, and Franciska Clausen. While her work does show the influence of Cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who was her close friend, she developed a unique approach to abstraction which often centered on the representation of groups of women and female portraits. Further, her work lies outside the bounds of Cubist norms in her pursuit of a specifically feminine aesthetic by her use of pastel colors and curvilinear forms. Laurencin, when painting her tender visions, attempted to reaffirm feminine seduction in the face of victorious modernism. The insistence on the creation of a visual vocabulary of femininity in her art can be seen as a response to what some consider to be the arrogant masculinity of Cubism. Laurencin continued to explore themes of femininity and feminine modes of representation until her death.