A sinuous and evocative depiction of the female form, Le Grand adieu is one of the most powerful works of Laurens’ mature career. Following his Cubist period of the 1920s, Laurens adapted his style to align with the rappel a l’ordre that had influenced the artistic vision of post-war France. His mature forms, as evidenced by the present work, adopted a more poetic style that featured a unique vocabulary of curved and volumetric forms. Depicting a woman folded lovingly around her child, Le Grand adieu was so meaningful to the artist that it adorns his grave at the Montparnasse Cemetery.

Although influenced by the voluptuous nudes of Maillol and Matisse, Laurens developed his own distinctive manner of portraying the female form. Combining organic volumes with energetic angles and curves, Laurens sculpture alludes to the Cubist penchant for deconstructing and recombining the composition.The dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler described this quality of Laurens' work: "The appearance of curvilinear forms in Laurens' work in no way signaled a renunciation of Cubism but was a part of normal evolution towards a new orientation" (Werner Hofmann, The Sculpture of Henri Laurens, New York, 1970, p. 50).