Fernand Léger

Galerie Louis Carré, Paris
Saidenberg Gallery, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Block
Acquired from the above in 1988

Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, Fernand Léger: Oeuvres d'Amérique 1940-1945, 1946, no. 14
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Alexandre Calder et Fernand Léger, 1947, no. 73
Bern, Kunsthalle, Calder, Léger, Bodmer and Leuppi, 1947, no. 67
The Art Institute of Chicago; The San Francisco Museum of Art; New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Léger, 1953-54, no. 51

Douglas Cooper, Fernand Léger et le nouvel espace, Geneva, 1949, illustrated p. 137 (as dating from 1944)
Katharine Kuh, Léger, Urbana, 1953, no. 51, illustrated p. 63 (titled Woman with Butterflies)
Pierre Descargues, Fernand Léger, Paris, 1955, illustrated p. 136
"Messages de la Grèce," Le Voyage en Grèce, Paris, 1956, illustrated p. 21
Pierre Descargues, Fernand Léger, Paris, 1997, illustrated p. 140
Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, 1938-1943, Le catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, Paris, 1998, no. 1119, illustrated p. 229

"Truth in painting is color at its fullest: red, black, yellow," Léger once said, "since pure tones in paintings is reality."  This philosophy governed the color palette for the present work, in which bands and patches of primary colors overlap the figural elements of the composition.  Save for the butterflies that seem to hover over the surface of the canvas, all of the figures are transparent and appear to recess into the background of the picture plane.  Colors rather than forms are the dominant features of this picture, which Léger painted in 1943 when he was living in the United States. 

Discussing the use of color in this picture, Katharine Kuh has written, "A free method of employing color without regard to forms or boundaries is frequent in Léger's American work and continues after he returned to France.  As long ago as 1912 he first experimented with juxtaposed areas of pure color in The Woman in Blue.  Later, in The City, he exploited the same idea much more boldly, but still made his color conform to the outlines of objects.  However, now color determines the composition and flashes over boundary lines and forms with a disregard reminiscent of neon lights going on and off, casting arbitrary and garish reflections on passing people and surroundings.  In Woman with Butterflies [the present work] patches of kinetic color emphasize the idea of flitting butterflies and birds, setting up a point-counterpoint activity between the central human figure and the circulating insects and birds.  But Léger's chief preoccupation, together with many of his contemporaries like Picasso, Matisse and Braque, is to use color freely in order to explore and invent new kinds of space" (Katharine Kuh, Léger, Urbana, 1953, p. 62).