Henri Laurens

(1885 – 1954)

The presence of a collage by Henri Laurens in the Planque Collection reflects the collector’s unconditional love of Cubism. Though one of that movement’s most unassuming members, Laurens was by no means its least skilled exponent. He transformed the art of sculpture by removing it from its pedestal and making it lighter, opening it up to every sort of vacant space and creating works in which emptiness has the presence of full volumes. With new, lighter materials – wood, cardboard, aluminum foil, fabric, found objects – he succeeded in shifting the axis and center of gravity of his forms and replacing them with a fruitful instability, an uncertain movement better suited to satisfying the gaze of a man passing through a modern city than the ponderous Neoclassical bronze statues that still encumber public squares. The exemplary sobriety of Guitar’s minimal construction was bound to appeal to Jean Planque: there is something miraculous about these few scraps of wrapping paper cut out almost haphazardly, arranged none too neatly, pasted and scribbled on, striking a perfect note.