Marie Laurencin

Marie Laurencin was the illegitimate daughter of a politician and a seamstress and grew up with her mother in Paris. She trained as a porcelain painter and then studied art, where she met Georges Braque.

Through Braque and Picasso she became part of the circle of artists at the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre and one of the few women among the early Cubists. From 1907 to 1912 she was the lover of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and painted him and his friends in her picture “Apollinaire and His Friends”. Soon she developed her own unmistakable style: gentle, dreamlike portraits of women and girls in soft pinks, greys and blues.

In 1914 she married a German baron and had to spend the First World War in exile in Spain; the marriage ended in divorce. Back in Paris she became a sought-after portraitist of society women and designed sets and costumes, among others for the ballet “Les Biches” with music by Francis Poulenc. She had relationships with women as well as men, among them the fashion designer Nicole Groult. Her paintings, full of women among themselves, have been read as an expression of female and lesbian desire.

She died in Paris in 1956, aged 72.