Woman with a Mandolin

Though thoroughly modern in its Cubist aesthetic—in which the subject is broken into angular facets and rounded elements as an abstract composition—this small figurine renders a traditional European subject, the draped female form. Like other Cubist artists of his generation, Henri Laurens was also inspired by the abstraction and expressiveness of ancient and nonwestern sources including African sculpture. The original meanings and ritual uses of such statues they so admired were often either unknown to them or ignored even as they appropriated their sculptural forms into a radical modern aesthetic.