Marie Laurencin – Spanish Dancers

This is Marie Laurencin's Spanish Dancers. Since her name may be less familiar in Korea, a brief introduction: Laurencin was a woman painter active in Paris in the early twentieth century who, early in her career, moved in the circles of Picasso's Cubism and Matisse's Fauvism and absorbed something of both styles.

When the First World War broke out, she was exiled from Paris for five years because her husband was German. After returning to Paris in 1919, she began painting in the style we see in this work.

The painting shows three women, a horse, and a dog; the woman in pink at the center is Laurencin herself. It captures scenes she observed while living in Spain during her exile. From this point on, women and animals became her favorite subjects, and nearly every Laurencin painting held by the Orangerie features one or both.