FERNAND LEGER

French Painter 1881 - 1955

La Grande Parade Du Cirque

Signed by artist

c. 1953

Framed: 36 x 30 inches

Inside Frame: 25 x 19 inches

Edition: 2/ 10 Artist Proof

Fernand Léger was a French painter who made a unique contribution to Cubism. Along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Léger crafted idiosyncratic methods of depicting three-dimensional objects in pictorial space. “I organize the opposition between colors, lines, and curves,” he said of painting. “I set curves against straight lines, patches of color against plastic forms, pure colors against subtly nuanced shades of gray.” Born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan, France, Léger apprenticed with an architect before moving to Paris in 1900, where he worked as an architectural draftsman. While taking courses at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, he came under the influence of Paul Cézanne, Picasso, and Braque. Around 1905, the artist developed his hallmark style of tubular forms and mechanical imagery. He would go on to create the avant-garde film Ballet Mécanique (1924) and design murals for Le Corbusier’s Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau (1925). By the end of World War II, Léger’s paintings had become increasingly abstract, with color transparencies floating amidst boldly drawn figures and objects, as seen in his Two Women Holding Flowers (1954). The artist died on August 17, 1955 in Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Albertina in Vienna.

About This Piece

Fernand Léger and his friends, act II. In Biot, near Antibes, the museum dedicated to the artist continues its exploration of the relationships that the figure of the avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century had with his peers. What friend or what inspirer was Léger, a very singular cantor of cubism with his canvases with dissociated cylindrical shapes that will make him the inventor of "tubism" Throughout this new edition, his works interact with the paintings and sculptures of 19 major artists (Bacon, Calder, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Lichtenstein & Matisse) Three face-to-face demonstration.

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (French: [leʒe]; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of pop art.

Léger was born in Argentan, Orne, Lower Normandy, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Léger initially trained as an architect from 1897 to 1899, before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles, Yvelines, in 1902–1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts after his application to the École des Beaux-Arts was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gérôme and others, while also studying at the Académie Julian.^[1][2] He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mère (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Léger's work after he saw the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907.^[3]

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