Revealing the vital influence of the French artist Marie Laurencin, her visual idiom, and her sexual expression on the modernism of twentieth-century Paris   This book offers a long-overdue reassessment of the career of the Parisian-born artist Marie Laurencin (1883–1956), who moved seamlessly between the Cubist avant-garde and lesbian literary and artistic circles, as well as the realms fashion, ballet, and decorative arts. Critical essays explore her early experiments with Cubism; her exile in Spain during World War I; her collaborative projects with major figures of her time such as André Mare, Serge Diaghilev, Francis Poulenc, and André Groult; and her role in the emergence of a “Sapphic modernity� in Paris in the 1920s. Along with more than 60 full-color plates, Laurencin’s life and career are documented through an illustrated chronology and exhibition history, as well as an appendix charting her network of female patrons and associates. Laurencin became a fixture of the contemporary art scene in pre–World War I Paris, including as a muse and romantic partner of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. She returned to the city after the war, having developed her signature style of diaphanous female figures in a blue-rose-gray palette. Laurencin’s feminine yet sexually fluid aesthetic defined 1920s Paris, and her work as an artist and designer met with high demand, with commissions by Ballets Russes and Coco Chanel, among others. Her romantic relationships with women inspired homoerotic paintings that visualized the modern Sapphism of contemporary lesbian writers like Nathalie Clifford Barney. Indeed, one of Laurencin’s final projects was to illustrate the poems of Sappho in 1950.   Distributed for the Barnes Foundation   Exhibition Schedule:   Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (October 22, 2023–January 21, 2024)

An in-depth exploration of how the iconic artist created his works over the course of his full career Among the most celebrated figures of modern art, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) has been the subject of many exhibitions and publications, but none until now has examined in depth how the artist created his paintings and sculptures. Drawing on research using the latest scientific techniques, the authors explore the artist's reuse of materials in his early years; his pivot from artistic trends such as Cubism to engage with a stylized form of figuration; the timeline of his evocative sculptures; and the evolution of his approach from heavily worked canvases to more ethereal paintings. The richly illustrated book also looks at the role of Albert C. Barnes, an early collector of Modigliani's work, in shaping the Italian artist's critical reception in the United States. The Barnes Foundation today owns one of the most important groups of Modigliani works in the world. These, together with some forty other paintings and sculptures from public and private collections worldwide, are interpreted through the lens of new studies carried out by leading international museums. Distributed for the Barnes Foundation Exhibition Schedule: The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (October 16, 2022-January 29, 2023)