Alice et le fiasco

Description

Alice et le fiasco, 1930 by Marie Laurencin is an original lithograph with hand-coloring in colored pencils by the artist.  A female portrait in hues of blue, pink, and green wearing a fashionable hat, a simple black choker, and floral decorations on the neckline.  Signed in the lower right in pencil, and numbered from the edition of 30 in the lower left. Provenance Collection HM Petiet. Marchesseau 150.

Marie Laurencin, (born October 31, 1883, Paris, France—died June 8, 1956, Paris), French painter, printmaker, and stage designer known for her delicate portraits of elegant, vaguely melancholic women. From 1903 to 1904 Laurencin studied art at the Humbert Academy in Paris. Among her fellow students was Georges Braque, who, with Pablo Picasso, soon developed the style of painting known as Cubism. The art dealer Clovis Sagot introduced Laurencin to Picasso in 1907, and she consequently became involved in the avant-garde milieu of the Cubists. Although Laurencin exhibited with the Cubist artists, she did not herself exploit the movement’s idiom. Her paintings typically are stylized depictions of pale, dark-eyed women and girls painted in pastel colours. The American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein, an important patron of avant-garde artists, was one of the first buyers of Laurencin’s work. Laurencin was romantically involved with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire for several years and produced several portraits of him and of their mutual friends, such as Group of Artists (1908). She illustrated several books, including a 1930 edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Her stage designs included scenery for the Ballets Russes (1924) and the Comédie Française (1928).