Paris, Grand Palais, Exposition de la Donation Henri Laurens, 1967, no. 114

By 1914, Laurens had adopted the tenets of Analytical Cubism from Braque, a dear frIend of his whom he knew from the neighborhood of Montmartre in Paris.  From the start, his explorations of Cubism were manifested in the medium of sculpture.  Tête de Jeune Fille is a brilliant example in terracotta of the artist's singular approach to Cubist sculpture.  Alberto Giacometti once wrote, " The sculpture of Laurens is, for me, more than any other, a veritable projection of himself in space, a little bit like a shadow in three dimensions.  His very manner of breathing, of touching, of feeling, of thinking became an object, became a sculpture...The least part of his sculpture has passed and repassed through the sensibility of its creator, becomeing like a very part of this sensibility.  Laurens advances on his oeuvre only with this absolute control and never seeks to go beyond it.  The dimensions, the proportions, the movement of the sculpture is established, becomes clearer and is determined finally in accordance with this same profound and complex sensibility"(quoted in Laurens and Braque (exhibition catalogue), New York C꧅ultural Center, 1971, p. 13). 

Fig 1, The artist with George Braque