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Lot Essay
In Petit caryatid, Laurens combins the sharp, fractured planes of Cubism with the simple grandeur of archaic sculpture. The figure is reduced to ovoid shapes that nonetheless harmonize into a cohesive whole. The crouching caryatid is solidly rendered; the body is compacted into a tight composition of which the head and limbs conform to the torso.
Werner Hofmann explained Laurens' pictorial resolution of Petit caryatid:
"The sculptural problem of the [Petit] caryatid is illuminated by the following consideration. The human body consists of head, trunk, and limbs. Taken by itself, the trunk is a circumscribed, compact volume, which is opened up and given space by the limbs. Any attempt to accentuate the closed volume without reducing it to a fragment--the torso--must contain the spatial ambition of the limbs and suppress their tendency toward expansion. This means that the limbs must adapt themselves to the compact volume of the trunk" (W. Hofmann, op. cit., p. 16).
Werner Hofmann explained Laurens' pictorial resolution of Petit caryatid:
"The sculptural problem of the [Petit] caryatid is illuminated by the following consideration. The human body consists of head, trunk, and limbs. Taken by itself, the trunk is a circumscribed, compact volume, which is opened up and given space by the limbs. Any attempt to accentuate the closed volume without reducing it to a fragment--the torso--must contain the spatial ambition of the limbs and suppress their tendency toward expansion. This means that the limbs must adapt themselves to the compact volume of the trunk" (W. Hofmann, op. cit., p. 16).