From cubism to figurative painting, Fernand Léger illustrated scenes from everyday life. Winding his way through the popular Parisian balls in the 1930s, the artist painted a large-scale canvas depicting a small orchestra composed of a cellist, an accordionist, and a tuba player. He returned to the ...
From cubism to figurative painting, Fernand Léger illustrated scenes from everyday life. Winding his way through the popular Parisian balls in the 1930s, the artist painted a large-scale canvas depicting a small orchestra composed of a cellist, an accordionist, and a tuba player. He returned to the theme of the trio of musicians in 1944, producing a circus series. Léger’s work is a visual and emotional response to the war and to the rapidly industrialising world around him. He was continually fascinated by what he called the “spectacle of modern life”. The mosaic titled Les Trois Musiciens was exhibited at the 4th Biennale de Sculpture de Monte-Carlo in 1993.
Fernand Léger was born in Argentan in 1881. In 1903, as an apprentice architect, he entered the École des Arts Décoratifs where he learned the art of sculpture and painting. He discovered the cubism of Cézanne, Braque, and Picasso and developed his own style, which he described as “tubist”. A major artists of the cubist movement, a painter of technological progress, he worked for the theatre, ballet, and cinema. A painter, sculptor and ceramic artist, he created tapestries in collaboration with the weavers of Aubusson. In 1950, he opened a ceramics workshop in Biot, where the National Fernand Léger Museum is now to be found. Léger died in 1955 in Gif-sur-Yvette. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide, including at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London. His dream of having one of his works put on public display was granted in 1994, when La Grande Fleur Qui Marche was installed on the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street in New York.
