Fernand Léger

Léger was born in Argentan, Orne, Lower Normandy, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Léger initially trained as an architect from 1897 to 1899, before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles, Yvelines, in 1902–1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts after his application to the École des Beaux-Arts was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gérôme and others, while also studying at the Académie Julian.^[1][2] He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mère (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Léger's work after he saw the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907.^[3]

Fernand Léger, Nudes in the forest (Nus dans la forêt), 1910, oil on canvas, 120 × 170 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

1909–1914

Les Fumeurs (The Smokers), 1911–12, oil on canvas, 129.2 × 96.5 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

La Femme en Bleu (Woman in Blue), 1912, oil on canvas, 193 × 129.9 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel. Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, Paris

Nude Model in the Studio (Le modèle nu dans l'atelier), 1912–13, oil on burlap, 128.6 × 95.9 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

In 1909 he moved to Montparnasse and met Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz, Marc Chagall, Joseph Csaky and Robert Delaunay.

In 1910 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in the same room (salle VIII) as Jean Metzinger and Henri Le Fauconnier. In his major painting of this period, Nudes in the Forest, Léger displays a personal form of Cubism that his critics termed "Tubism" for its emphasis on cylindrical forms.^[4]

In 1911 the hanging committee of the Salon des Indépendants placed together the painters identified as 'Cubists'. Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, Delaunay and Léger were responsible for revealing Cubism to the general public for the first time as an organized group.

The following year he again exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and Indépendants with the Cubists, and joined with several artists, including Le Fauconnier, Metzinger, Gleizes, Francis Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp to form the Puteaux Group—also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section).

Léger's paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract. Their tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colors plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms. Léger made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso.^[5]

1914–1920

Fernand Léger, 1916, Soldier with a pipe (Le Soldat à la Pipe), oil on canvas, 130 × 97 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dùsseldorf

Léger's experiences in World War I had a significant effect on his work. Mobilized in August 1914 for service in the French Army, he spent two years at the front in Argonne.^[4] He produced many sketches of artillery pieces, airplanes, and fellow soldiers while in the trenches, and painted Soldier with a Pipe (1916) while on furlough. In September 1916 he almost died after a mustard gas attack by the German troops at Verdun. During a period of convalescence in Villepinte he painted The Card Players (1917), a canvas whose robot-like, monstrous figures reflect his experience of the war. As he explained:

...I was stunned by the sight of the breech of a 75 millimeter in the sunlight. It was the magic of light on the white metal. That's all it took for me to forget the abstract art of 1912–1913. The crudeness, variety, humor, and downright perfection of certain men around me, their precise sense of utilitarian reality and its application in the midst of the life-and-death drama we were in ... made me want to paint in slang with all its color and mobility.^[6]

This work marked the beginning of his "mechanical period", during which the figures and objects he painted were characterized by sleekly rendered tubular and machine-like forms. Starting in 1918, he also produced the first paintings in the Disk series, in which disks suggestive of traffic lights figure prominently.^[7] In December 1919 he married Jeanne-Augustine Lohy, and in 1920 he met Le Corbusier, who would remain a lifelong friend.

1920s

Still Life with a Beer Mug, 1921, oil on canvas, Tate, London

The "mechanical" works Léger painted in the 1920s, in their formal clarity as well as in their subject matter—the mother and child, the female nude, figures in an ordered landscape—are typical of the postwar "return to order" in the arts, and link him to the tradition of French figurative painting represented by Poussin and Corot.^[8] In his paysages animés (animated landscapes) of 1921, figures and animals exist harmoniously in landscapes made up of streamlined forms. The frontal compositions, firm contours, and smoothly blended colors of these paintings frequently recall the works of Henri Rousseau, an artist Léger greatly admired and whom he had met in 1909.

They also share traits with the work of Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant who together had founded Purism, a style intended as a rational, mathematically based corrective to the impulsiveness of cubism. Combining the classical with the modern, Léger's Nude on a Red Background (1927) depicts a monumental, expressionless woman, machinelike in form and color. His still life compositions from this period are dominated by stable, interlocking rectangular formations in vertical and horizontal orientation. The Siphon of 1924, a still life based on an advertisement in the popular press for the aperitif Campari, represents the high-water mark of the Purist aesthetic in Léger's work.^[9] Its balanced composition and fluted shapes suggestive of classical columns are brought together with a quasi-cinematic close-up of a hand holding a bottle.

La femme et l'enfant (Mother and Child), 1922, oil on canvas, 171.2 x 240.9 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel

As an enthusiast of the modern, Léger was greatly attracted to cinema, and for a time he considered giving up painting for filmmaking.^[10] In 1923–24 he designed the set for the laboratory scene in Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine (The Inhuman One). In 1924, in collaboration with Dudley Murphy, George Antheil, and Man Ray, Léger produced and directed the iconic and Futurism-influenced film Ballet Mécanique (Mechanical Ballet). Neither abstract nor narrative, it is a series of images of a woman's lips and teeth, close-up shots of ordinary objects, and repeated images of human activities and machines in rhythmic movement.^[11]

In collaboration with Amédée Ozenfant he established the Académie Moderne, a free school where he taught from 1924, with Alexandra Exter and Marie Laurencin. He produced the first of his "mural paintings", influenced by Le Corbusier's theories, in 1925. Intended to be incorporated into polychrome architecture, they are among his most abstract paintings, featuring flat areas of color that appear to advance or recede.^[12]

1930s

Starting in 1927, the character of Léger's work gradually changed as organic and irregular forms assumed greater importance.^[13] The figural style that emerged in the 1930s is fully displayed in the Two Sisters of 1935, and in several versions of Adam and Eve.^[14] With characteristic humor, he portrayed Adam in a striped bathing suit, or sporting a tattoo.

In 1931, Léger made his first visit to the United States, where he traveled to New York City and Chicago.^[15] In 1935, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented an exhibition of his work. In 1938, Léger was commissioned to decorate Nelson Rockefeller's apartment.^[16]

1940s

Paintings by Fernand Léger, 1912, La Femme en Bleu, Woman in Blue, Kunstmuseum Basel; Jean Metzinger, 1912, Dancer in a café, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; and sculpture by Alexander Archipenko, 1912, La Vie Familiale, Family Life (destroyed). Published in Les Annales politiques et littéraires, n. 1529, 13 October 1912

During World War II Léger lived in the United States. He taught at Yale University, and found inspiration for a new series of paintings in the novel sight of industrial refuse in the landscape. The shock of juxtaposed natural forms and mechanical elements, the "tons of abandoned machines with flowers cropping up from within, and birds perching on top of them" exemplified what he called the "law of contrast".^[17] His enthusiasm for such contrasts resulted in such works as The Tree in the Ladder of 1943–44, and Romantic Landscape of 1946. Reprising a composition of 1930, he painted Three Musicians (Museum of Modern Art, New York) in 1944. Reminiscent of Rousseau in its folk-like character, the painting exploits the law of contrasts in its juxtaposition of the three men and their instruments.^[18]

During his American sojourn, Léger began making paintings in which freely arranged bands of color are juxtaposed with figures and objects outlined in black. Léger credited the neon lights of New York City as the source of this innovation: "I was struck by the neon advertisements flashing all over Broadway. You are there, you talk to someone, and all of a sudden he turns blue. Then the color fades—another one comes and turns him red or yellow."^[19]

Upon his return to France in 1945, he joined the Communist Party.^[20] During this period his work became less abstract, and he produced many monumental figure compositions depicting scenes of popular life featuring acrobats, builders, divers, and country outings. Art historian Charlotta Kotik has written that Léger's "determination to depict the common man, as well as to create for him, was a result of socialist theories widespread among the avant-garde both before and after World War II. However, Léger's social conscience was not that of a fierce Marxist, but of a passionate humanist".^[21] His varied projects included book illustrations, murals, stained-glass windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures, and set and costume designs.

1950s

Stained-glass window at the Central University of Venezuela, 1954

After the death of Leger's wife Jeanne-Augustine Lohy in 1950, Léger married Nadia Khodossevitch in 1952. In his final years he lectured in Bern, designed mosaics and stained-glass windows for the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela, and painted Country Outing, The Camper, and the series The Big Parade. In 1954 he began a project for a mosaic for the São Paulo Opera, which he would not live to finish. Fernand Léger died at his home in 1955 and is buried in Gif-sur-Yvette, Essonne.

Discover more about Biography related topics

Argentan

Argentan

Argentan is a commune and the seat of two cantons and of an arrondissement in the Orne department in northwestern France.

Orne

Orne

Orne is a département in the northwest of France, named after the river Orne. It had a population of 279,942 in 2019.

Lower Normandy

Lower Normandy

Lower Normandy is a former administrative region of France. On 1 January 2016, Lower and Upper Normandy merged becoming one region called Normandy.

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects, bringing the academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.

Académie Julian

Académie Julian

The Académie Julian was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and quality of artists who attended during the great period of effervescence in the arts in the early twentieth century. After 1968, it integrated with ESAG Penninghen.

Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.

Kröller-Müller Museum

Kröller-Müller Museum

The Kröller-Müller Museum is a national art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands. The museum, founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller within the extensive grounds of her and her husband's former estate, opened in 1938. It has the second-largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, after the Van Gogh Museum. The museum had 380,000 visitors in 2015.

Kunstmuseum Basel

Kunstmuseum Basel

The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the oldest public art collection in the world and is generally considered to be the most important museum of art in Switzerland. It is listed as a heritage site of national significance.

Montparnasse

Montparnasse

Montparnasse is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split between the 6th, 14th, and 15th arrondissements of the city. Montparnasse has been part of Paris since 1669.

Alexander Archipenko

Alexander Archipenko

"Alexander Archipenko". Britannica. 2022. Retrieved 2023-02-16.

Jacques Lipchitz

Jacques Lipchitz

Jacques Lipchitz was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of Crystal Cubism. In 1920 Lipchitz held his first solo exhibition, at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne in Paris. Fleeing the Nazis he moved to the US and settled in New York City and eventually Hastings-on-Hudson.

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall was a Russian-French artist. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.

Léger wrote in 1945 that "the object in modern painting must become the main character and overthrow the subject. If, in turn, the human form becomes an object, it can considerably liberate possibilities for the modern artist." He elaborated on this idea in his 1949 essay, "How I Conceive the Human Figure", where he wrote that "abstract art came as a complete revelation, and then we were able to consider the human figure as a plastic value, not as a sentimental value. That is why the human figure has remained willfully inexpressive throughout the evolution of my work".^[22] As the first painter to take as his idiom the imagery of the machine age, and to make the objects of consumer society the subjects of his paintings, Léger has been called a progenitor of Pop Art.^[23]

He was active as a teacher for many years, first at the Académie Vassilieff in Paris, then in 1931 at the Sorbonne, and then developing his own Académie Fernand Léger, which was in Paris, then at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1938–1939), Mills College Art Gallery in Oakland, California during 1940–1945, before he returned to France.^[24] Among his many pupils were Nadir Afonso, Paul Georges, Charlotte Gilbertson, Hananiah Harari, Asger Jorn, Michael Loew, Beverly Pepper, Victor Reinganum, Marcel Mouly, René Margotton, Saloua Raouda Choucair and Charlotte Wankel, Peter Agostini, Lou Albert-Lasard, Tarsila do Amaral, Arie Aroch, Alma del Banco, Christian Berg, Louise Bourgeois, Marcelle Cahn, Norman Carton, Otto Gustaf Carlsund, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Robert Colescott, Lars Englund, Tsuguharu Foujita, Sam Francis, Serge Gainsbourg, Hans Hartung, Florence Henri, William Klein, Maryan, George Lovett Kingsland Morris, Marlow Moss, Aurélie Nemours, Gerhard Neumann, Jules Olitski, Erik Olson, Richard Stankiewicz and Stasys Usinskas.^[24]

In 1952, a pair of Léger murals was installed in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations headquarters in New York City.^[25]

In 1960, the Fernand Léger Museum was opened in Biot, Alpes-Maritimes, France.

Léger bequeathed his residence (at 108 Avenue du General Leclerc, Gif sur Yvette, Paris) to the French Communist Party, which later hosted negotiations of the Paris Peace Accords between the United States, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam^[26]

In May 2008, his painting Étude pour la femme en bleu (1912–13) sold for $39,241,000 (hammer price with buyer's premium) United States dollars.^[27]

In August 2008, one of Léger's paintings owned by Wellesley College's Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Mother and Child, was reported missing. It is believed to have disappeared some time between April 9, 2007 and November 19, 2007. A $100,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to the safe return of the painting.^[28]

Léger's work was featured in the exhibition "Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis" from October 14, 2013, through January 5, 2014, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.^[29]

In 2022, it was announced that a lost painting of the rooftop series was discovered on the opposite side of the painting Bastille Day.^[30]

Discover more about Legacy related topics

Nadir Afonso

Nadir Afonso

Nadir Afonso, GOSE was a Portuguese geometric abstractionist painter. Formally trained in architecture, which he practiced early in his career with Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, Nadir Afonso later studied painting in Paris and became one of the pioneers of Kinetic art, working alongside Victor Vasarely, Fernand Léger, Auguste Herbin, and André Bloc.

Paul Georges

Paul Georges

Paul Gordon Georges was an American painter. He painted large-scale figurative allegories and numerous self-portraits.

Charlotte Gilbertson

Charlotte Gilbertson

Charlotte Gilbertson was an American painter and printmaker.

Hananiah Harari

Hananiah Harari

Hananiah Harari was an American painter and illustrator.

Asger Jorn

Asger Jorn

Asger Oluf Jorn was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International. He was born in Vejrum, in the northwest corner of Jutland, Denmark, and baptized Asger Oluf Jørgensen.

Michael Loew

Michael Loew

Michael Loew was an American Abstract Expressionist artist who was born in New York City.

Beverly Pepper

Beverly Pepper

Beverly Pepper was an American sculptor known for her monumental works, site specific and land art. She remained independent from any particular art movement. She lived in Italy, primarily in Todi, since the 1950s.

Marcel Mouly

Marcel Mouly

Marcel Mouly was a French artist who painted in an abstract style.

René Margotton

René Margotton

René Margotton (1915-2009) was a French painter of the School of Paris, one of the last cubists of the 20th century. He was born in Roanne, France, in 1915, and died in 2009. He is also the father of Bernard Romain

Charlotte Wankel

Charlotte Wankel

Charlotte Wankel was a Norwegian painter regarded as one of the first Norwegian cubist and painters of abstract art.

Peter Agostini

Peter Agostini

Peter Agostini was an American sculptor.

Lou Albert-Lasard

Lou Albert-Lasard

Lou Albert-Lasard was an Expressionist painter.

• 

  Le compotier (Table and Fruit), 1910–11, oil on canvas, 82.2 × 97.8 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Reproduced in Du "Cubisme", 1912

• 

  Étude pour trois portraits (Study for Three Portraits), 1911, oil on canvas, 194.9 × 116.5 cm, Milwaukee Art Museum

• 

  Les Toits de Paris (Roofs in Paris, 1911, oil on canvas, private collection. Reproduced in Du "Cubisme", 1912

• 

  Composition (Study for Nude Model in the Studio), 1912, oil, gouache, and ink on paper, 63.8 × 48.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art

• 

  Paysage (Landscape), 1912–13, oil on canvas, 92 × 81 cm

• 

  Contrast of Forms (Contraste de formes), 1913. Published in Der Sturm, 5 September 1920

• 

  Nature morte (Still life), 1914

• 

  Paysage No. 1 (Le Village dans la forêt), 1914, oil on burlap, 74 x 93 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery

• 

  Le Fumeur (The Smoker), 1914, oil on canvas, 100.3 x 81.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art

• 

  Dans L'Usine, 1918, oil on canvas, 56 × 38 cm

• 

  The City (La ville), 1919, oil on canvas, 231.1 × 298.4 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art

• 

  The Railway Crossing, 1919, oil on canvas, 54.1 × 65.7 cm, Art Institute of Chicago

• 

  Grand parade with red background, 1958 (designed in 1953), mosaic, National Gallery of Victoria

Discover more about Gallery related topics

Du "Cubisme"

Du "Cubisme"

Du "Cubisme", also written Du Cubisme, or Du « Cubisme », is a book written in 1912 by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. This was the first major text on Cubism, predating Les Peintres Cubistes by Guillaume Apollinaire (1913). The book is illustrated with black and white photographs of works by Paul Cézanne (1), Gleizes (5), Metzinger (5), Fernand Léger (5), Juan Gris (1), Francis Picabia (2), Marcel Duchamp (2), Pablo Picasso (1), Georges Braque (1), André Derain (1), and Marie Laurencin (2).

Milwaukee Art Museum

Milwaukee Art Museum

The Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection contains nearly 25,000 works of art.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. In 2022 it welcomed 3,208,832 visitors, ranking it eighth in the list of Most visited art museums in the world, and the second-most visited art museum in the United States. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot (190,000 m2) building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

Der Sturm

Der Sturm

Der Sturm was a German avant-garde art and literary magazine founded by Herwarth Walden, covering Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, among other artistic movements. It was published between 1910 and 1932.

The City (Léger)

The City (Léger)

The City is a 1919 painting by French painter and sculptor Fernand Léger. The painting is Cubist in style and is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as part of the collection donated by Albert Eugene Gallatin. Gallatin donated the piece to the museum in 1952 and it has also been shown at the Guggenheim Museum. In reviews of the Guggenheim exhibit, both The City and other works in the show were praised.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval. The museum administers collections containing over 240,000 objects including major holdings of European, American and Asian origin. The various classes of artwork include sculpture, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, armor, and decorative arts.

Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 million people annually. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments, is encyclopedic, and includes iconic works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and Grant Wood's American Gothic. Its permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art is augmented by more than 30 special exhibitions mounted yearly that illuminate aspects of the collection and present cutting-edge curatorial and scientific research.

National Gallery of Victoria

National Gallery of Victoria

The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum.

References

Sources

• Bartorelli, Guido (2011). Fernand Léger cubista 1909-1914. Padova, Italy: Cleup. ISBN 978-88-6129-656-5.
• Buck, Robert T. et al. (1982). Fernand Léger. New York: Abbeville Publishers. ISBN 0-89659-254-5.
• Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X.
• Eliel, Carol S. et al. (2001). L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918-1925. New York: Harry Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-6727-8.
• Léger, Fernand (1973). Functions of Painting. New York: Viking Press. Translation by Alexandra Anderson.
• Léger, Fernand (2009). F. Léger. exhibition catalogue. Paris: Galerie Malingue. ISBN 2-9518323-4-6.
• Néret, Gilles (1993). F. Léger. New York: BDD Illustrated Books. ISBN 0-7924-5848-6.