Louis Marcoussis was born Ludwig Casimir Ladislas Markus in 1878 in Warsaw. He moved to Paris in 1903, first studying at Académie Julian and the studio of Jules Lefebvre. Marcoussis’ early style was heavily influenced by the Post-Impressionists, exhibiting at both at the Salon d’Automne and Salon des Indépendants from 1905 onwards.

He began his career creating humorous drawings for such magazines as ‘La Vie Parisienne’ and ‘L’Assiette au beurre’, but on meeting Apollinaire (under whose advice he Frenchified his name), Picasso and Braque in the cafes of Montmatre he adopted Cubism in 1910. Marcoussis regularly participated in the Salon des Independents and the highly important 1912 Salon de la Section d’Or in which Cubism gained recognition.

Having worked largely with engravings in the early 1930s in 1937 - the year he created ‘Deux Dormeurs’ - Marcoussis returned to painting. ‘Deux Dormeurs’ is typical of Marcoussis’ vibrant Cubist style. The artist investigates the use of pictorial planes and multiple view points through abstracting the bodies to intersecting diagonal forms. The painting is from a group of mature works Marcoussis created that focus on a Cubist expression of the body.