Just when we thought we knew the landscape of French art in the first quarter of the 20th century, Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris, co-curated by Simonetta Fraquelli and Cindy Kang, shakes up the narrative with a fresh exhibition of a major Parisian painter largely neglected by art history. A bisexual woman (already two reasons for her prior invisibility in that now dated story), Laurencin (1883–1956) carefully crafted a “feminine” aesthetic into a significant body of work that was ahead of its time.
Regarded as one of the most celebrated women painters in Paris during the 20th century, “Marie Laurencin: Sapphic Paris” is on display at the Barnes Foundation through to Jan. 21,