1923 was the year Marie Cuttoli met the love of her life, with whom she would end up sharing fifty years of happiness and total intellectual and artistic affinity. Henri Laugier asked her to recommend him to her husband in his fund-raising effort for a new project to which he was wholeheartedly committed: Les Compagnons de l’université nouvelle, in support of an educational reform. This charismatic, refined man, an excellent speaker, compulsive worker, humanist, doctor, and physiologist, was also a perceptive art lover. For Laugier, an utterly honest man, falling in love with a married woman posed a profound moral dilemma. He spoke his heart to Marie in simple, honest terms: "When a man who has chosen to make his life an ongoing quest for loyalty and goodness has a surge of feelings for a loyal, good, accessible woman, of one of those passions that ravage the heart and the soul and leave him like a devastated battlefield... what is he to do?" Marie was under his spell. This educated scientist shared her ideas, her ideals, and her tastes in art. Henri Laugier was the person with whom "she could share her thoughts about the art world, someone who adored her and understood her, showed concern for her work, knew how to advise her and give her words of support." They would never leave each other. Marie was unable to get a divorce; her husband refused to do so. From then on, she led her life keeping up appearances with Paul Cuttoli, but never giving up Henri Laugier ("I know that in your heart there is everything I love. You are kind, wonderful, and generous, and so honest, so true... so very much yourself! I love you."[1] For the first time in her life, she was enraptured by someone with whom she could discuss everything from the deepest of subjects to artistic matters. Laugier would pursue a brilliant career with an almost philosophical approach to the struggles he took on and a sort of "unhappy awareness" of the injustices in the world around him. Together they would acquire an exceptional contemporary art collection that, according to Jean Cassou, revealed the "distinct features" of their respective personalities. According to Henri Laugier, "A masterpiece may not resemble anything, may not remind you of anything. It doesn't have to tell a story or imitate something. All it has to do is be beautiful, in and of itself, in its own right, and this substantial beauty is what true art criticism must strive to grasp and explain. […] A time of harmony exists that covers and designates this system of truly mysterious correspondences between dimensions, directions, curves, arabesques, straight lines, and surfaces. The harmonious relationship between values and colors is more mysterious still."[2]
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Summary