[1] Credited as the first American sculptor to adopt a "direct carving" sculpting style that was bolder and more abstract than the then traditional fine arts practice, which relied on models, Laurent's approach was inspired by the African carving and European avant-garde art he admired, while also echoing folk styles found both in the U.S. and among medieval stone cutters of his native Brittany.

[2] Best known for his virtuoso mastery of the figure, Laurent sculpted in multiple media, including wood, alabaster, bronze, marble and aluminum.

[1] In 1908, Field took Laurent to Rome, where he trained with Maurice Sterne and wood carver Giuseppe Doratori,[5] before formally studying at the British Academy.

Upon graduation, Laurent moved permanently to the U.S. at age twenty, only to quickly return to Europe as a member of the navy during the First World War.

[11] Field and Laurent were, conversely, committed modernists, and appealed to more experimental students and colleagues, such as Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Niles Spencer, gallery owner Edith Gregor Halpert and curator Holger Cahill, among others.

[3] In 1945, he won the Audubon Sculpture Award in New York, several first prizes in Hoosier salons, and in exhibits at the John Herron Museum, Indianapolis.

[8] The exhibit, which included such celebrated artists as sculptors Ibram Lassaw and Isamu Noguchi and painters Hyman Bloom, Jackson Pollock and Edward Hopper was coordinated by the United States Information Agency (USIA), and liberal critics subsequently characterized it as a Cold War American "propaganda strategy.