Untitled (from Dialogues) 

Henri Laurens made this print, sometime in the mid-twentieth century, using linocut and stencils. It’s part of a series called Dialogues, and it speaks to the wider modernist concern with the relationship between figure and ground. The print deploys a visual language rooted in the cultural milieu of post-war France. Its stylized representation of the human form recalls both classical sculpture and the simplified forms embraced by Cubism. The use of linocut – a technique closely associated with printmaking collectives – subtly references the democratizing impulses in the post-war art world. The bold use of color, coupled with the fragmentation of form, could be seen as both a break with tradition and a reflection on the fractured experience of modernity. To understand Laurens’s work fully, we must delve into the archives of his era, exploring exhibition reviews, artists' letters, and other forms of cultural documentation. Ultimately, it is through this work of historical contextualization that the meaning of the art emerges.