Laurent Baude
Born in 1956, lives and works in Lagnes, France
Laurent Baude was born in 1956 in Saint Maurice, near Paris. He spent his childhood in Thailand, then in Jordan where he learned Arabic and discovered a passion for archaeology and art; he spent his teenage years in Finland and then in Sweden where, after his baccalaureate, he studied sculpture at the Stockholm School of Decorative Arts.
In 1979, Laurent Baude decided to continue his studies in Paris, and for four years he attended the César workshop at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. There he practised nudes which, he says, "allowed him to understand sculpture from the inside", and began to use bits of wood and scrap metal to hollow out volumes. He also became interested in the effects of colour on forms. His research led him to create a kind of totem pole that the gallery owner Eric Fabre was one of the first to notice, in 1983. Since then, he has exhibited regularly in Paris: galleries Li Edelkoort, Lavrov, J.G.M., Pixi, Lasés and abroad: New York, Athens, Beirut, Chicago...
In the 1990s, Laurent Baude continued to pursue a nomadic career. He spent a year in Egypt (with a Leonardo da Vinci/Villa Medici grant), returned to Paris, left to teach sculpture in Beirut, before responding, in 1998, to an invitation from Mark di Suvero to the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. In 2000, he exhibited again in New York, with Triangle, in a tower of the World Trade Center. In 2001 and 2002, he was in Chicago, where he taught sculpture at the S.A.I.C. (School of Fine Arts of the Art Institute of Chicago). Currently, the artist lives and works in the Vaucluse.
Laurent Baude was awarded the Jackson Pollock / Lee Krasner prize in 2002. He is represented in the best private collections on both sides of the Atlantic.