Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris

Exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 22 October 2023 - 21 January 2024

A key figure on the contemporary art scene in pre-First World War Paris, notably as muse and romantic partner to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) moved seamlessly between the Cubist avant-garde and lesbian literary and artistic circles, as well as in fashion, ballet and the decorative arts.

Laurencin's feminine and sexually fluid aesthetic defined Paris in the 1920s, and her work as an artist and designer was in great demand, with commissions from the Ballets Russes and Coco Chanel, among others. Her love affairs with women inspired homoerotic paintings that visualise the modern-day sapphicism of contemporary lesbian writers such as Nathalie Clifford Barney.

This richly illustrated exhibition catalogue offers a reassessment of Marie Laurencin's career. Critical essays analyse her early experiments with Cubism, her exile in Spain during the First World War, her collaborative projects with major figures of her time such as André Mare, Serge Diaghilev, Francis Poulenc and André Groult, and her role in the emergence of a "sapphic modernity" in Paris in the 1920s.