The podcast “Les grandes dames de l’art” (“Great women of art”) gives a voice to the women artists of the 20th century. They talk about their work, their life, the world around them, and their achievements. Let us go in search of their presence, their secrets. Let us rediscover the hidden stories of women artists through their voices.

For this second season, we open a new chapter that plunges us into the Paris of the inter-war period, the decade that became notoriously known as the Roaring Twenties. What did the wildness of this decade consist of? It is largely due to women who flourished in this welcoming capital, lived their lives as they wanted, and became artists on equal footing with men. They played a primordial role in the construction of modernity, and we are rediscovering them today.

Among the women artists present in Paris in the 1920s, many more than one would think are well-known and able to live from their work. Marie Laurencin, born in 1883, who modestly repeated in her interviews that she had no natural predisposition for painting, is one of these personalities to rediscover.

After training at the Manufacture de Sèvres, where she learned to paint on porcelain, the French artist took painting classes at the Humbert Academy. At the turn of the century she met the Parisian avant-garde, amongst which are Picabia and Braque, who in turn introduced her to Picasso as well as Apollinaire, poet and influential art critic of her time, with whom she had a romantic relationship from 1907 to 1912. He put her on a par with male artists in his art columns. In fact, Marie Laurencin was famous during her lifetime. She exhibited very regularly both before and after the war, and received many portrait commissions of celebrities of the time, including, to name but one, Coco Chanel.