The Adroit Princess

Marie Laurencin – curated by Jelena Kristic

Info: Galerie Buchholz is pleased to present its second exhibition dedicated to Marie Laurencin (1883–1956). This survey, featuring approximately 60 prints, many of which are hand-colored and rare impressions, and 30 illustration projects, charts Laurencin’s longstanding engagement with printmaking from 1904 until the year of her death in 1956. In her lifetime, Laurencin produced approximately 300 prints, the majority of which illustrated more than eighty publications. From this prodigious output, we can observe the formation and function of Laurencin’s near-exclusive subject, the jeune fille, or young woman. In creating her clichéd jeune fille, Laurencin drew on a variety of female stereotypes from nineteenth-century literature and popular print culture, such as those of the working-class girl (la grisette), the street prostitute (la lorette), the kept woman (la courtisane), and the coquettish ladies of Épinal prints and fashion plates. A selection of these nineteenth-century materials is displayed in the Antiquariat Buchholz store window. (…)