Boldly and elegantly modeled, Jeune fille au corsage jaune is a striking example of Léger's firm commitment to figuration and his fascination with the expressive potential of color—the two defining stylistic factors of his artistic output during the final years of his life. Rendered on an intimate scale, the young girl of Jeune fille au corsage jaune nonetheless achieves a monumental presence. Attaining a purity of figuration through strength of form and color, Léger here succeeds in articulating the essential spirit of his subject. Executed just four years prior to the artist’s death, the present painting undeniably stands at the apex of Léger’s prodigious and eternally authoritative output.
Executed in 1951, the present work embodies Léger's freely composed and organic style that emerged upon his return from wartime exile in the United States to his studios on the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and in Montrouge, France. Upon joining the French Communist Party in 1945, the artist became increasingly devoted to the cause of improving living and social conditions for the working people of his country. This respect for the working classes manifests in Léger's work through a greater humanization of the figure. Reflecting upon this stylistic transition, the artist declares, “If I was able to approach very close to a realistic figuration, it was because the violent contrast between my workmen and the metal geometry in which they are set is at its maximum. Modern sculptures, whether social or other, are valid insofar as this law of contrasts is respected; otherwise one falls back on the classical picture of the Italian Renaissance" (the artist quoted in Werner Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, Paris, 1977, p. 162). With eyes averting the viewer in an enigmatic, neutral gaze, the young girl imparts an abiding, serene stillness. Aligning with Léger's other archetypal depictions of women, upon which he conferred an anonymous, universal value, the present work recalls portraiture of both the Renaissance and Neoclassical titans such as Ingres, Poussin, and David.
Jeune fille au corsage jaune fully conveys the visual hallmarks of Léger's return to figuration following his use of an abstract pictorial language throughout the 1940s. Elements such as the lustrous uniformity of the woman’s black hair recall the stylistic hallmarks of his 1920s and 1930s portraits. As with his prior period of figuration, Léger did not view this change as a rejection of the aims of abstraction. Instead, the present work uses a new vocabulary to channel his defining artistic interest in the primacy of painting through the elements of color and form.
The present work further synthesizes compositional and formal devices established in the oeuvre of Henri Matisse, as is particularly evident in La Blouse roumaine from 1940. In parallel with Léger, Matisse increasingly emphasized a vigorously graphic style during the later years of his practice. Presaging Léger’s use of unvariegated swathes of red and white to frame his subject, Matisse anchors his female model within the pictorial space through the billowing sleeves of her ornamental Romanian blouse. Both artists also employ hands to equal effect, rupturing the strong verticality of the composition and underscoring the bold renderings of their respective sitters.
Aligning with the principles of Purism, which seeks to articulate the pure essence of objects and people, Léger renders his subject with sharp clarity. Devolved to contours of bold, black lines, the girl expresses the signature strikingly graphic style of the artist’s late work. Rendered in fully saturated swaths of primary colors, combined with black and white, the present work equally encapsulates Léger’s conviction that those colors express the reality of the medium of painting. The delineated white and red striations of the background create a flattened pictorial space against which the viewer’s attention is drawn to the strength of line and contrasting evocation of form. The areas of bright, unmodulated pigment stand in contrast to the girl and her corsage, as well as the disembodied hands that caress her face, which emphasize Leger’s use of a chiaroscuro technique adapted to Modernist sensibilities. An investigation of the interplay between depths, Jeune fille au corsage jaune conveys a substantial, dynamic visual presence. In so doing, the present work wholly embodies the governing aesthetic principles of Léger’s practice:
“The plastic life, the picture, is made up of harmonious relationships among volumes, lines, and colors,” the artist explains, “These are the three forces that must govern works of art. If, in organizing these three essential elements harmoniously, one finds that objects, elements of reality, can enter into the composition, it may be better and may give the work more richness. But they must be subordinated to the three essential elements mentioned above.”
The treatment of color and form exemplified by Jeune fille au corsage jaune produced a profound effect on a new generation of Post-War American artists, including Roy Lichtenstein and Ellsworth Kelly, in subsequent decades. Occupying almost the entirety of the picture plane, the graphically rendered subject of Jeune fille au corsage jaune readily evokes Lichtenstein’s treatment of the female figure. Art historian Philippe Büttner affirms, "Léger's presence in Lichtenstein's oeuvre is indeed more than obvious. Again and again he gives places of prominence to quotations of Léger's motifs.... Lichtenstein recognized that his own art shared many things in common with Léger's…and emphasized that these things surely also had something fundamentally to do with Pop" (Exh. Cat., Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Fernand Léger, Paris—New York, 2008, p. 21). A bold and forward-looking composition, the present work encapsulates the signature elements of Léger’s style that have come to mark him as one of the greatest artistic innovators of the last century.