Fernand Léger

(French, 1881-1955) 

“Man needs color to live; it’s just as necessary an element as fire and water.”
— Fernand Léger

Celebrated modernist Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and teacher. His bold and simplified treatment of modern subject matter marks him as a forerunner of pop art. While he continually modified his style, his work was dependably graphic, frequently using primary colors, pattern, and bold form. Although Léger gained recognition from his early, largely Cubist manner, his style kept evolving through the decades, with influences from a wide range of sources and ever-changing proportions of figuration and abstraction. His work harmonizes dualities usually at odds in twentieth century art, as he fused recognizable subject matter and three-dimensionality with non-representation and abstraction.

Léger was born in rural Argentan, France to a poor family. His father was a cattle dealer and hoped his son would follow in his footsteps, which he believed was most practical. His father initially discouraged his son’s desire to be an artist but quickly became supportive after he witnessed his gift for drawing. With his father’s approval, Léger enrolled in architecture school, and after completion of his two-year internship, he moved to Paris where he worked as an architectural drafter. The artist was eager to further pursue his art education and applied to the École des Beaux-Arts, but they rejected him. In 1903, he began attending the Paris School of Decorative Arts instead, and two professors from the École des Beaux-Arts unofficially mentored him. His original style was Impressionism blended with Fauvism, but he later began to emphasize geometry and drawing in his pieces after seeing the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. In 1913, he began an abstract painting series, Contrast of Forms. The next year, however, he put his artistic aspirations on hold, joining the French Army for World War I. After two years in the war, a mustard gas attack nearly killed him at Verdun, and he suffered a head injury. He was sent home and hospitalized until 1917. Around this time his artistic "mechanical period" began, during which he painted figures and objects with slick cylindrical and machine-like forms, whose robotic figures possibly reflect his war experience. His Cubist style at this time, while embracing the fracturing of objects into geometric shapes, was unique in that he kept the illusion of three-dimensionality, using cylindrical form and robot-like human figures.

When peace returned and he had recovered, Léger fully returned to artistic endeavors, painting and exploring other mediums such as book illustrations and set and costume designs for the theatre. In December 1919, he married Jeanne-Augustine Lohy. He opened his own school of modern art, the Académie Moderne, with Amédée Ozenfant in 1924, the same year he created his first film Ballet Mécanique. In the 1920s and 30s Léger continually explored modernism, specifically through subjects of machinery and human figures expressing speed and movement. He produced the first of his "mural paintings” in 1925. In 1927, organic and irregular forms became more prominent in his work. His first teaching position was at the Académie Vassilieff in Paris. He taught at the Sorbonne in 1931 and went to the United States for the first time, visiting New York City and Chicago. The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented an exhibition of his work in 1935, and a few years later Nelson Rockefeller commissioned the artist to decorate his apartment.

World War II prompted Léger to relocate to the United States temporarily in 1940, where he continued painting and taught at Yale and at Mills College Art Gallery in Oakland, California. Six years later, he returned to France, where he revitalized his art school. His work became more representational and less abstract, featuring acrobats, builders, divers, and country outings, showing a "determination to depict the common man, as well as to create for him,” according to art historian Charlotta Kotik. Leger joined the Communist Party upon returning to France, but Kotik claims his “social conscience was not that of a fierce Marxist, but of a passionate humanist." Leger's first wife died in 1950. Two years later, Léger married Nadia Khodossevitch, and in the same year, a pair of his murals was installed in the United Nations headquarters in New York City. In his final years, he lectured, designed mosaics and stained-glass, and painted. In 1954, he began a project for a mosaic for the São Paulo Opera, which he would leave unfinished, passing away at his home in 1955 in Gif-sur-Yvette, Essonne.

Léger worked in a variety of media including paint, print, book illustrations, murals, stained-glass windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures, and film, theater and dance set and costume designs. He was exceptionally inspired, talented, and skilled. His work was highly influential, as was his desire to make art that everyone could understand. Major museums and galleries all over the world, including the Musée Fernand Léger in France, have exhibited and continue to show the work of this Modernist master.

American Fine Art, Inc. is proud to feature the original works and limited editions of Fernand Léger. Visit our 12,000 sq. ft. showroom in Scottsdale, Arizona or call today. Our website is offered only as a limited place to browse or refresh your memory and is not a reflection of our current inventory. To learn more about collecting, pricing, value or any other art information, please contact one of our International Art Consultants. We look forward to giving you the one on one attention you deserve when building your fine art collection. We hope you find our website helpful and look forward to seeing you in Scottsdale soon.