As a member of the Association des écrivains et artistes révolutionnaires, Henri Laurens has been invited to the building of the Karl Marx School of Villejuif. This city in the south of Paris was between both Wordl Wars a socialist community which was at the origin of the construction of several areas foreseeing the hygienist and sovietic architectural style of the 1940s. The Karl Marx School was then an important inauguration, for it concentrates the participation of major artists from the period, like André Lurçat, architect, his brother, Jean Lurçat, painter and upholster, and Henri Laurens, then at the acme of his career.

The latter created an allegorical nude female figure which was named Stella, after its star inscribed on a ribbon. Laurens and the architect chose to produce this monuemntal figure in a very modern material for the modenature of architecture, aluminium, emphasis the fact that a new era was coming. It’s indeed an allegory of the importance of work (at first the rustic work in russian tradition) as a mind elevation. The fluidity of the composition is allowed by the curved line of the hanging arm followed by the ribbon in contrast with the straight angle of the left leg/hip and torso.