Fernand Léger

In all his art, Fernand Léger sought to represent the experience of the modern world. Born in Normandy in 1881, Léger apprenticed in an architect’s office before moving in 1900 to Paris to work as a draftsman. Three years later, he enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs after failing to gain a place at the École des Beaux-Arts.

After renting a studio at La Ruche, an artists’ enclave in Montparnasse, Léger gained a foothold in the Parisian avantgarde. There, he met Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Chaim Soutine and the poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. Although initially Léger’s paintings were more Impressionist in style, during these years, he developed his own understanding of Cubism, in part inspired by his encounters with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and like his contemporaries, Léger’s compositions too featured multiple perspectives and the fragmentation of form, as seen in Contrastes de formes.

Léger’s years spent at the French front during World War I profoundly shaped his oeuvre. Following his experience serving alongside his countrymen, he became determined to make art accessible to the working classes. The war also furthered his interest in mechanical imagery: ‘Those four years threw me suddenly into a blinding reality that was entirely new to me,’ Léger recalled. ‘I was suddenly stunned by the sight of the open breech of a .75 cannon in full sight, confronted with the play of light on white metal […] It was in the trenches that I really seized the reality of objects.’ Léger was hospitalised for a period and released from the army in 1917. The following year he painted La partie de cartes (The Card Party) and began to imbue his canvases with more mechanical imagery.

In addition to painting, Léger worked in other media. In 1926, he devised and directed The Mechanical Ballet, a film, and later designed sets for ballets, created mosaics and made ceramics. Along with Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant, he was associated with Purism, a movement that emerged during the 1920s that sought to meld classicism and modernity. As a result, Léger began to paint a series of classicising female nudes, but even as he took on this age-old theme, his figures nevertheless belonged to the modern era.

With the outset of World War II, Léger left France and moved to the United States, where he remained until 1945. Until his death a decade later, his output continued to be varied and experimental, with Léger creating paintings, book illustrations, sculptures and stained-glass windows. The artist was awarded the Grand Prize at the 1955 São Paulo Bienal, shortly before his death on 17 August.