Fernand Léger

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired from the estate of the artist)
Sonia Henies and Niels Onstad Stiftelsen, Norway
Galerie Bel Art, Stockholm
Perls Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Stockholm

Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus; Stockholm, Moderne Museet, 1960, no. 29
Basel, Kunsthalle, no. 0550
London, Tate Gallery, Sonja Henies - Niels Onstad Collection, 1962, no. 26

In excellent condition. The work is unlined. The surface is slightly dirty. Under U.V. light, no inpainting is apparent.
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Painted in 1954, the present work exemplifies the vanguard modernism of the artist's later oeuvre. The composition is comprised of broad swaths of vibrant primary color superimposed upon thick brawny black lines depicting everyday objects. Léger eschews naturalism and chooses instead to explore the language of painting in its purest state, thus reducing his focus to the concepts of color and form.  Such efforts precede the pop-art of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein a decade later as they sought  to conquer the search for artistic purity. Nature morte aux trois fruits represents the dynamic effect the artist left on the subsequent generation of contemporary artists.

Werner Schmalenbach writes "Fernand Léger's colors have neither transparency nor transcendence. Being mostly primary, they conceal nothing and symbolize nothing. Their nature is physical rather than psychic, sensory rather than intellectual. They are used less for self-expression—for which the artist felt no need—than to enable the painting and the objects represented in it to make a certain pictorial statement.  They belong to the 'objective' world of the picture" (Werner Schmalenbach, Fernand Leger, New York, 1976, p. 16).