Today we’re highlighting French painter and pop art forerunner, Fernand Léger. The artist’s story began in humble circumstances on a cattle farm close to Normandy. Farm work didn’t interest Léger much and it became obvious early on that he would pave a different path. Recognized for his drawing ability, Léger would initially study architecture, starting in 1897. While working as a draftsman in Paris, he was deeply inspired by Paul Cézanne’s retrospective at the Salon d’Auaomne, circa 1905. During that era, Léger would rub shoulders with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, both of whom proved important influences on the artist.
Between 1911 and 1914, Léger began to pave his own path as a fine artist. His painting became more abstract and his signature bold primary color palette emerged. In 1912, Léger's first show was hosted by Galerie Kahnweiler in Paris.
In 1914, World War 1 abruptly interrupted Léger’s work (and life). The artist’s wartime service inspired a “mechanical” period - marked by dark and dramatic machine-like forms. Of the era, he remarked: “My experiences at the front and the daily contact with machines led to the change which marked my painting.”
Over the next twenty years, Léger would come into his own as a creative, enjoying commercial success and recognition for his work across multiple mediums including set design, costumes, and large-scale murals. His own take on Cubism would become affectionately referred to as “Tubism”.
Léger visited the United States for the first time in the 1930s, leading up to successful exhibitions with Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Léger called the United States home 1940 to 1945 but returned to France after the Second World War. In his final years, he continued to expand the scope of his work with figure painting, book illustrations, mosaics, and stained glass windows. Fernand Léger passed in 1955 and Musée Fernand Léger was inaugurated in his honor five years later in Biot, France.
“Léger is a man so steeped in the world around him that his art cannot be separated from contemporary vision”
Katherine Kuh, MoMa, 1953
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