Commemorating Robert Laurent’s contribution to American modern art, Tom Veilleux Gallery will be featuring a show of important sculpture and drawings by the artist at Six City Center, Portland, Maine December 4, 2012 through January 25, 2013.

The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday 10-5, and will be closed for the holidays.

In 1901, when Robert Laurent was only eleven years old, he and his family were brought to America by the painter, critic and patron of the arts Hamilton Easter Field so that the young Robert could study art under Field’s tutelage. The family lived with Field in Brooklyn Heights, where Field owned three brownstones, and where he entertained artists and, on occasion, held exhibitions.

Laurent returned to Europe in 1904 to study art in Paris and in Rome. He visited Picasso’s Paris studio in 1907 and there saw Picasso’s own sculptures as well as the African carvings that Picasso had acquired. While in Paris he was exposed to Paul Gauguin’s wood carvings and the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi. These events were to have a lasting influence on the development of his art and his approach to direct carving which he pursued upon his return to America in 1910.

Laurent’s early works consisted of carved relief panels in wood, inspired by Gauguin. These often depicted idyllic, pastoral subjects such as the work Nudes in the Trees (1915), shown in this exhibition. He had a show of these carved panels at the Daniel Gallery in New York in 1915. At around this time he also began directly carving abstract forms and pieces that he referred to as Plant Forms. These he carvedin native hard woods; the form dictated by the shape of the log, as in the African carvings he had seen in Paris.  Abstract Form, shown in this exhibition, is an early example of these. Other examples are in the Brooklyn Museum and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

The Bather (c. 1920), a life sized mahogany sculpture of a young woman, featuring black painted hair will also be for sale in this exhibition. It has formerly been on loan for several decades to the Portland Museum of Art.

Around 1920 Laurent also began working regularly in stone. A photograph of the artist in his Ogunquit studio, taken by the LIFE Magazine photographer Andreas Feininger around 1945, shows Laurent at work, with the limestone Torso of a Woman (1920-1926), which is in this exhibition, behind him. He continued to favor limestone for many of the public commissions he executed, including the relief Shipping for the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC. A preliminary drawing for that commission is in this exhibition.

During the mid-1920’s he began exploring the translucent qualities of alabaster in earnest, creating some of his most important works in this medium including The Wave (Brooklyn Museum) and its closely relate counterpart A Basque (this exhibition).

Beginning in 1919 Laurent taught at the Art Students League in New York and at the Ogunquit School of Painting and Sculpture, which he helped found with Hamilton Eater Field. Both in New York and in Ogunquit, Maine, Laurent interacted with some of the most advanced artists of his time, including Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. He later continued his teaching career at Indiana University.

Laurent was also, along with Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and the sculptor, Elie Nadelman, one of the first collectors of American folk art. He collected carved wooden decoys, primitive portraits and cigar store Indians, and this interest, no doubt, influenced his work, as it did Nadelman’s and numerous other avant-garde artists of this era.

Robert Laurent, sculptor, teacher and collector, died in his sleep, at his home in Cape Neddick, Maine on April 20, 1970, in a bed that he had carved himself with fanciful designs.

The exhibition will be ongoing December 4, 2012 through January 25, 2013 (closed for the holidays December 22-31).

The gallery is located at Six City Center, Portland, Maine 04101. Gallery Hours are Tuesday - Friday 10-5.

 Website: www.tomveilleux.com

Telephone: 207-828.0784

A brochure of the exhibition is available upon request.