In his younger years, Henri Laurens initially made a name for himself with Cubist still lifes, reliefs, and assemblages made of various materials. Later, he devoted himself to stone and bronze sculptures, exploring the multiple possibilities for representing the female nude. A motif that ultimately came to characterize his entire oeuvre. In 1929, Laurens traveled to northern Italy and Tuscany. Impressions of sculptural works in the context of architecture he had gathered there led the artist to turn increasingly to spatial sculptures, some of which he executed cases in large formats.

His unique sculptural work was also influenced by classical antiquity and the cubist representations of Georges Braque, as well as the surreal bodily deformations in the works of Pablo Picasso and the stylized stereotypes of physicality in the paintings of Fernand Léger.
The human figure always inspired his formal inventions. Still, in his dynamic, voluminous sculptures, Henri Laurens is not concerned with copying reality or with similarity to the human body and its proportions but rather with simplification and stylization.
“Although artistic and contemporary history influenced it from the outside, it stands for an unwavering path at peace with itself. Laurens was able to place pure sculptural form at the center of his artistic interest while still addressing the recipients of his works through parameters such as movement, posture, and content on a lively and thoroughly emotional level.” (Veronika Wiegartz, in: Arie Hartog u. Ulrike Lorenz (eds.), exhib. cat. Henri Laurens. Wellendöchter, Cologne 2019, p. 25)

“Petite cariatide,” with its partially over-sized, soft limbs reduced to almost geometric forms, contains references to Henri Laurens' earlier Cubist phase, while it also evokes a revived classicist linearity of soft, rounded forms of great sensuality, as is characteristic of his works from the 1920s. The voluminous, closed, compact body appears to have been cut out of a cuboid or cubic form. The straight back is extended by the angled arms, which join in a curve above the angular face. Kneeling on one leg, the female figure stretches upwards, and while the right leg emphasizes the vertical, the left leg, placed horizontally on the ground, brings the entire posture into balanced harmony.

Laurens repeated the motif of the caryatid with its wonderful, compact harmony in several terracotta sculptures, in a red gouache (“Femme assise aux bras levés”, 1937, private collection, Hamburg) and also in a very large version of the work offered here in bronze and stone. The large stone sculpture was the first work by Henri Laurens to be purchased by the French state in 1936 (“Cariatide assise”, stone, Musée National d'Art Moderne, now the Centre Pompidou, Paris). Smaller versions of the artist's large-size works often existed, but Laurens seemed to ascribe the same artistic value to both. Both versions of several of his works were exhibited in numerous exhibitions during the artist's lifetime, e.g., at the critical retrospective show at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1951.
The bronze “Petite cariatide” offered here is, as described, a small version of the stonework in the Centre Pompidou, it is particularly fascinating for its absolutely timeless, sensually smooth forms, its plump, lively physicality, and an intrinsic static calm that corresponds to its volume, stability, and balanced composition.

In 1948 and 1950, Henri Laurens represented France at the Venice Biennale. In 1953/54, his works were shown at the second São Paulo Biennale, which at the time was the most extensive biennale in the world after Venice. Laurens received the first prize for sculpture, ahead of Henry Moore and Alexander Calder. Bernard Dorival, a French art historian, art critic, and curator at the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris at the time, explained: “Three qualities [...] place Laurens above Moore: his sense of volume, his sense of material and his sense of movement.” (Quoted from: Veronika Wiegartz, in: ibid., p. 18) [CH]