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Early Life and Arrival in America

Robert Laurent (1890, 1970) was a French-born American sculptor whose career helped define direct carving in the United States. Raised in Brittany, he came to America as a teenager and found decisive mentorship and support under the painter, critic, and collector Hamilton Easter Field. Field recognized Laurent's talent early, guided his education, and introduced him to the American avant-garde. The move to the United States placed Laurent at a crossroads of modern aesthetics and practical craft, a combination that would remain central to his work.

Mentor and the Ogunquit Circle

Hamilton Easter Field founded an influential arts community and summer school in Ogunquit, Maine. There, Laurent absorbed modernist ideas while keeping close to the elemental processes of carving. After Field's untimely death in the 1920s, Laurent became one of the key figures preserving the spirit of the Ogunquit school. He worked among and influenced a cohort that included artists associated with Field's circle such as Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Peggy Bacon, and Alexander Brook. The camaraderie in Ogunquit emphasized rigor, experimentation, and respect for materials; Laurent's studio practice and teaching in Maine set a standard for merging tradition with the new visual language that was taking hold in America.

Direct Carving and Artistic Voice

Laurent's signature contribution was his embrace of taille directe, carving directly into wood and stone without relying on plaster models or mechanical pointing. He preferred materials like hardwoods and limestone whose grain and structure shaped the final form. His figures often balance stylization and vitality: simplified, rhythmic silhouettes, clear masses, and tactile surfaces that reveal the chisel's path. Laurent drew from varied sources, folk carving, African sculpture, and Romanesque form, without imitation, folding those impulses into a distinctly personal idiom. In this he was in dialogue with fellow carvers such as William Zorach and Chaim Gross, who also reacted against academic modeling in favor of hand-to-material immediacy. Laurent's approach celebrated the block's integrity, using the resistance of the medium to refine composition and gesture.

New York Connections and Recognition

Laurent's winters were often spent in New York, where he participated in progressive exhibitions and found allies among modernist patrons and curators. The network around Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney helped bring attention to artists exploring new forms, and Laurent's sculpture found its way to prominent venues and into museum collections. He was shown alongside contemporaries like Elie Nadelman and Gaston Lachaise, sculptors whose work, though distinct from his, shared a search for essentialized form and a rethinking of the figure. Critics noted Laurent's synthesis of modern sensibility and artisanal clarity; collectors appreciated the permanence and intimacy of his carvings, which bridged studio object and architectural presence.

Teaching and Indiana University

In the 1940s Laurent accepted an invitation to teach at Indiana University, where he would shape generations of sculptors. He carried the Ogunquit ethos into the classroom, emphasizing design from the block, disciplined craftsmanship, and an understanding of how scale, mass, and setting affect meaning. The university's forward-looking leadership, notably president Herman B Wells, fostered an environment in which public art and pedagogy were taken seriously. Laurent's studio became a locus for dialogue about the role of sculpture in civic life and the ways modern form could engage broad audiences without sacrificing complexity.

Showalter Fountain and Public Commissions

Laurent's most widely known public commission is the Showalter Fountain at Indiana University, installed in 1961 through the philanthropy of Grace Showalter and the advocacy of Herman B Wells. The fountain's central figure, a modern interpretation of Venus, rises amid leaping dolphins, its bronze surfaces orchestrating reflections and spray. The work embodies Laurent's priorities: clarity of silhouette, a poised relationship between figure and environment, and a directness that reads from afar yet rewards close looking. Collaborating with engineers and foundry specialists, he translated the intimacy of carving into a civic scale, ensuring durability while preserving the expressive vitality of his forms. The fountain quickly became an emblem of the campus and a touchstone for discussions about modern sculpture in public space.

Later Years and Legacy

Dividing his time between Maine and the Midwest, Laurent remained committed to teaching, carving, and stewarding the values he had inherited from Hamilton Easter Field. He continued to mentor younger artists, reinforcing the belief that sculpture is shaped as much by tools and materials as by ideas. He died in 1970, leaving a legacy anchored in three interwoven achievements: the introduction and refinement of direct carving in the United States, the cultivation of a living artistic community from Ogunquit to Bloomington, and a body of work that unites modern form with tactile craft. Through students he guided, colleagues he influenced, and patrons such as Grace Showalter who believed in the public reach of art, Laurent helped position sculpture as both a studio discipline and a civic language. Today, his carvings and his public works stand as reminders that the most enduring modernism often begins with the pressure of a hand against resistant material, and with the communities that nurture that discipline.