Queer Places:
Père Lachaise Cemetery, 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris, Francia
Marie Laurencin (31 October 1883 – 8 June 1956) was a French painter and
printmaker.[1]
She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the
Cubists associated with the Section d'Or. In her 1960 autobiography, Here
Lies the Heart,
Mercedes De Acosta claimed
to have been intimate with
Isadora Duncan,
Marlene Dietrich,
Alice B. Toklas,
Marie Laurencin,
Eva Le Gallienne,
Malvina Hoffman
and
Greta Garbo.
Laurencin was born in Paris, where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. At 18, she studied porcelain painting in Sèvres. She then returned to Paris and continued her art education at the Académie Humbert, where she changed her focus to oil painting.
During the early years of the 20th century, Laurencin was an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde. A member of both the circle of Pablo Picasso, and Cubists associated with the Section d'Or, such as Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri le Fauconnier and Francis Picabia, exhibiting with them at the Salon des Indépendants (1910-1911) and the Salon d'Automne (1911-1912), and Galeries Dalmau (1912) at the first Cubist exhibition in Spain. She became romantically involved with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and has often been identified as his muse. In addition, Laurencin had important connections to the salon of the American expatriate and famed lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney. She had heterosexual and lesbian affairs.[2]
During the First World War, Laurencin left France for exile in Spain with her German-born husband, Baron Otto von Waëtjen, since through her marriage she had automatically lost her French citizenship. The couple subsequently lived together briefly in Düsseldorf. After they divorced in 1920, she returned to Paris, where she achieved financial success as an artist until the economic depression of the 1930s. During the 1930s she worked as an art instructor at a private school. She lived in Paris until her death.
Portraits (Marie Laurencin, Cecilia de Madrazo and the Dog Coco) 1915
Marie Laurencin (1883–1956)
Tate
My published books:
