Fernand Léger

The artist's widow
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired from the above in 1963)
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Stephen Hahn Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above in 1970

Stockholm, Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, 1968, no. 3
Basel Galerie Beyeler, Fernand Léger, 1964, no. 31

Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné 1929-1931, Paris, 1995, vol. IV, p. 310, no. 791, illustrated p. 311

In excellent condition. Unlined. Surface shows a bit of minor surface dirt, with a few small spots of slightly discolored varnish, lower left quadrant. Under UV: no apparent inpainting.
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In 1931, the year the present work was painted, Léger made his first trip to the United States where he visited New York and Chicago, the twin centers of the jazz age.  His American experiences provided powerful stimuli that sustained the intensity of his work, resulting in his use of vibrant blocks of color and a freer use of images.  The dynamism of American life fascinated him, but his enthusiasm for the American experience was tempered by his observations of ordinary people in these two teeming cities: "They pass like sheep, without speaking a word, isolated, one on top of another.  This is the real America.  Next to this, Paris is like an elegant etching"(Translation of a letter to Le Corbusier, Sept. 29, 1931, quoted in Fernand Léger, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1997, p. 321).

Léger's feelings about the potentially dehumanizing aspects of modernity resulted, upon his return to Paris, in the adoption of the more natural forms which then began to populate his work.  Léger developed themes of trees and roots in particular, which seem to have inspired the bleached white vegetal form to the right side of the composition.

There are several still life elements that bear no relation to nature as well.  Two balls, a brick and a barbell float in a willfully undefined space against a series of colored strips.  While the brick and balls achieve an appearance of plasticity through linear perspective, the barbell and vegetal form derive their dimensionality through shading.  Clearly the artist is experimenting with the representational means at his disposal.  He takes the experiment further by placing along the top of the canvas a thin strip of sky blue, complete with clouds, as if to remind the viewer of the traditional naturalistic type of picture that the painting itself undermines and rejects.  As Peter de Francia observed of Léger's work from the 30's: "In some of the painting a kind of landscape vista is suggested...but this could be misleading since it annuls the notion of verticality common to all the paintings."

As Léger explained years later, unconsciously using language which references his title for the present work "I placed objects in space so that I could not place an object on a table without diminishing its value.  I selected an object, chucked the table away, I put the object in space, minus the perspective, minus anything to hold it there.  I then had to liberate the color to an even greater extent" (Dora Vallier, "La Vie fait l'oeuvre de Fernand Léger", Cahier d'Art, no. 2, Paris, 1954, pp. 152-153).

Judi Freeman describes Léger's work of the late 20s and early 30s as follows: "The work produced during this period is perhaps among the most enigmatic, iconographically speaking, of his career.  But it acts as a kind of bridge between the machine aesthetic of the immediate postwar period and the monumental figurative work of the late 30's onward, allowing those two aspects of his career to come full circle in effect.  The close-up, the fragment, the object and the objectives, rethought, reworked, and reshuffled during these years become the basis for Léger's enduring world view that allows renewed realism to enter what had previously been a relatively abstract art"("L'Evenement d'Objectivé Plastique: Leger's Shift from the Mechanical to the Figurative, 1926-1933", Fernand Léger, The Later Years, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1987, p. 31).

This work relates to a large mural done by the artist in Vezelay for his frIend, the architect Badovici.  The mural is in the collection of the Musée de l'Art Moderne, Paris.