Henri Laurens’s Most Famous Sculptures
In the history of 20th-century sculpture, certain names echo like chisels striking marble. Rodin. Brancusi. Giacometti. But among these giants stands a quieter, perhaps more lyrical figure , Henri Laurens , whose works bridge the experimental daring of Cubism with the stylized elegance of Art Deco. His sculptures, simultaneously solid and fluid, geometric and sensual, embody a particular moment in modern art history when abstraction met the human form with tenderness rather than austerity.
Born in Paris in 1885, Laurens began life far from the glamorous studios of Montparnasse. The son of a shoemaker, he apprenticed as a stonemason and decorator, skills that grounded him in the tactile intimacy of carving long before the art world knew his name. Yet it was precisely this foundation , working with stone, plaster, and architectural ornament , that later allowed him to transform the Cubist vocabulary into something deeply sculptural and enduring.
The Road to Art Deco
Laurens’s early career unfolded during the rise of Cubism, the revolutionary movement pioneered by Picasso and Braque. While painters could play with fractured perspectives on a flat canvas, sculptors faced the challenge of making these geometric planes coexist in three dimensions. Laurens rose to this challenge in the 1910s, translating Cubist forms into works of limestone, wood, and bronze.
By the 1920s, however, his work began to soften. The angular severity of early Cubism gave way to more voluptuous, rounded forms , a shift in harmony with the emerging Art Deco style. Art Deco was, in many ways, the “modern luxury” of its time: streamlined yet ornamented, forward-looking yet decorative. Laurens became one of the rare artists to merge Cubist structural thinking with the sensual curves that Art Deco celebrated.
Henri Laurens’s Most Famous Sculptures
While Laurens’s career spanned decades, a handful of his works have entered the canon of modern sculpture for their formal beauty and influence.
1. La Sirène (The Mermaid), 1933
Perhaps his most iconic work, La Sirène is a sensuous figure combining Cubist geometry with flowing curves. The stylized mermaid , abstracted yet unmistakably feminine , seems almost to sway in stone. Created in limestone, this piece exemplifies Laurens’s mastery of merging mass with movement. Today, versions and casts of La Sirène are held in private collections and major museums, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.
2. La Grande Musicienne, 1937
This monumental sculpture captures Laurens’s fascination with music and rhythm in visual form. The female figure appears as both body and instrument, her limbs and torso arranged like the strings and curves of a lute. It reflects Laurens’s ability to merge human and abstracted forms into a single harmonious composition.
3. La Jeune Fille à la Guitare, 1924
One of his earlier transitional works, La Jeune Fille à la Guitare shows the influence of synthetic Cubism but softens the angular lines into a lyrical interpretation of the seated female musician , a recurring motif in Laurens’s oeuvre. The sculpture resonates with the jazz-age cultural climate, where music and visual arts often intersected.
4. L’Amphion, 1952
Commissioned for the façade of the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, L’Amphion is one of Laurens’s most public and celebrated works. Towering and monumental, it synthesizes his lifetime’s exploration of volume and form, becoming a symbolic guardian of the new postwar cultural order.
What Henri Laurens is Known For
Henri Laurens is remembered for three interwoven qualities:
Cubist Sculptural Innovation – While Cubism is most often associated with painting, Laurens played a pivotal role in bringing its fragmented planes and perspectives into three-dimensional art. He worked closely with contemporaries like Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and his sculptures of the 1910s stand as key contributions to Cubist form.
The Female Form in Abstraction – Laurens’s women are both muses and architectural elements. His nudes, mermaids, and musicians are stylized into flowing masses, often without detailed faces, yet they carry immense personality and sensual presence.
Bridging Cubism and Art Deco – Laurens uniquely straddled two important art movements, adopting Cubism’s structural integrity but softening it into the stylized elegance that made Art Deco sculpture so alluring.
How Henri Laurens Made His Sculptures
Laurens’s methods were grounded in the tactile, labor-intensive techniques he learned as a young stonemason.
Materials: He worked in limestone, terracotta, plaster, wood, and bronze. Limestone was a favorite for its warmth and ability to hold smooth, flowing curves. Bronze allowed for limited-edition casts, which helped disseminate his work internationally.
Direct Carving: Unlike some sculptors who created clay models for others to translate into stone, Laurens often used taille directe , direct carving. This approach meant cutting directly into the material without an intermediary model, allowing for an intimate, responsive relationship with the evolving form.
Cubist Construction: In his earlier works, Laurens sometimes built sculptures like a collage , assembling carved elements into a composite form. This method mirrored Cubist painters’ use of collage and multiple viewpoints.
Integration with Architecture: Laurens believed sculpture could be part of a larger architectural or decorative program. This belief led him to create bas-reliefs, fountains, and large-scale commissions that complemented their environments.
The Market Value of Henri Laurens’s Sculptures
Collectors have long recognized the significance of Laurens’s work, and prices for his sculptures have steadily climbed. His value depends on factors such as rarity, material, condition, and provenance.
Small Bronze or Terracotta Works: These can sell at auction for $20,000–$100,000, depending on edition size and desirability.
Significant Stone Carvings: Unique limestone or marble pieces have fetched $500,000–$2 million at major auctions.
Monumental Works: Large-scale pieces, particularly those with public exhibition history, can exceed $3 million.
Drawings and Maquettes: While more accessible, even preparatory works can reach five-figure sums due to Laurens’s reputation.
In recent years, sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s have reaffirmed Laurens’s position as one of the most valuable French sculptors of the early modern period , a testament to both his aesthetic legacy and the enduring appeal of Art Deco.
Where Henri Laurens’s Sculptures Can Be Found
Laurens’s sculptures are now dispersed across the globe, both in public institutions and private collections.
Major Museums and Institutions:
Musée National d’Art Moderne (Centre Pompidou), Paris – Holds a comprehensive collection of Laurens’s work, including La Sirène.
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris – Features several key pieces, particularly from his Art Deco phase.
Tate Modern, London – Houses notable bronze works and Cubist pieces.
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York – Includes important examples of his Cubist sculptures and prints.
Philadelphia Museum of Art – Holds a representative selection of Laurens’s work across different mediums.
UNESCO Headquarters, Paris – L’Amphion remains an enduring public monument.
Public Spaces:
Laurens was committed to integrating sculpture into public life. Works like L’Amphion and certain war memorials and fountains can be found in French towns, continuing his belief that sculpture should live among people, not just behind museum walls.
Private Collections:
Because Laurens produced limited-edition bronzes, many reside in private hands, appearing occasionally at auction. These pieces often travel between collectors and exhibitions, maintaining a certain mystique.
A Life Intertwined with Modernism
What makes Laurens’s story compelling is how intimately it reflects the shifts of early 20th-century art. He began in the artisanal world of stonecutting, embraced Cubist radicalism in his youth, found a lyrical Art Deco voice in maturity, and ultimately left monumental works for the public realm. Along the way, he worked in close friendship with Braque, Picasso, and Juan Gris , not as a mere follower, but as a peer whose sculptures carried the Cubist conversation into new terrain.
Laurens’s art has a rare quality: it feels modern without being cold, abstract without losing the human touch. His mermaids and musicians are not portraits of specific individuals, but archetypes , distilled forms of human beauty and rhythm that seem to exist outside time.
Henri Laurens’s Enduring Appeal
Part of Laurens’s enduring appeal lies in his ability to make stone seem light and music seem solid. The balance he struck , between structure and sensuality, between abstraction and recognition , is precisely what makes his sculptures so collectible and so widely displayed.
In the hierarchy of modern sculpture, Laurens may not have sought the theatrical self-promotion of some of his peers, but his legacy is no less important. The market has caught up to this fact, and museums continue to showcase his works as examples of how early 20th-century art could be avant-garde and beautiful in equal measure.
His La Sirène still draws crowds for the way it captures an eternal archetype in a language that belongs wholly to its time. L’Amphion still greets visitors to UNESCO, embodying the ideals of unity and culture. And his smaller bronzes still pass from hand to hand among collectors, each one a fragment of modernism’s history.
The Sculptor Who Sang in Stone
Henri Laurens’s sculptures tell us that modernism need not reject beauty to be radical. Through the steady curve of a mermaid’s tail, the poised mass of a musician’s body, or the monumental presence of a public commission, Laurens left a legacy that bridges the divide between the geometric and the organic.
From his humble beginnings in Paris to the grand halls of UNESCO, from intimate bronzes to towering stone figures, Laurens’s work reminds us that art is not just about breaking rules , it’s about finding new harmonies. And in the interplay between Cubist precision and Art Deco grace, Henri Laurens found his lifelong song. image/ phillips
