Carole Pinto Fine Arts

This charming depiction of an angelic young woman with a guitar is emblematic of Laurencin's delicate portraiture of elegant, vaguely melancholic women. The refinement of the figure's features - from her rosebud lips to her large, downcast eyes, contributes to her dreamlike quality.  Laurencin's use of vibrant crosshatching adds texture and rhythmic energy to the composition, whereas the horizontal flow of her sun kissed wings contrasts with her vertical stance, adding and element of spirituality to the work.  

Laurencin was one of the few female artists who became an important member of early XXth centiury Paris Avant-Garde movement, which included Picasso, Gleizes and Delaunay.  Although she experimented in Cubism, she developed a unique approach to abstraction which often centered on the representation of groups of women and female portraits.  Her prints and paintings are stylized depictions of pale, dark-eyed women and young girls painted in pastel colors.   Her work lies outside the bounds of Cubist norms, given her pursuit of a specifically feminine aesthetic and her use of pale tonalities and curvilinear forms. Laurencin continued to explore themes of femininity and what she considered to be feminine modes of representation until her death.