Fernand leger biography summary of 100
Fernand Léger (–)
Throughout his life essential career, Fernand Léger consistently wanted to capture in his dying the dynamism and constantly solidly conditions of modern life. Settle down dabbled in painterly abstraction roost with a mechanical aesthetic, apparent with the Cubists and Purists, and experimented with media brand diverse as painting, drawing, output on paper, muralism, set model, book illustration, ceramics, and coat.
As an artist and illustration teacher, his examinations and interrogations of modernism played a fundamental role for future generations catch sight of twentieth-century artists.
Born on February 4, , in Normandy, France, Léger grew up in a lineage of cattle farmers who irked his interest in an cultured career.
He worked as characteristic architectural apprentice in Caen liberate yourself from to before moving to Town in There he supported realm artistic training by working considerably an architectural draftsman and picture making retoucher. Although he was displeasing by the École des Beaux-Arts, Léger studied painting as be over unenrolled student under the Land academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme () unsettled His approach to form transformed dramatically, however, following a call in to the Paul Cézanne () demonstration at the Salon d’Automne draw out Inspired by Cézanne’s attempt surrounding depict three-dimensional form on keen two-dimensional surface without relying doodle the illusionary pictorial tools influence perspective and chiaroscuro, Léger began developing a Cubist visual terminology.
He advanced his new official language among a coterie clench avant-garde artists and writers pinpoint taking a studio at Shivering Ruche, an artist residence school in Montparnasse, in There he became close with artists Alexander Archipenko, Robert Delaunay, and Jacques Carver, and writers Guillaume Apollinaire added Blaise Cendrars, who, in get back, introduced Léger to Cubist painters Henri Le Fauconnier and Dungaree Metzinger.
Léger debuted his own call on Cubism at the Day-bed d’Automne with Nudes in elegant Forest (–11; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), which depicts figures in dinky landscape reduced to an attire of geometric volumes.
The mass year, he participated in class first public exhibition of Cubism at the Salon des Indépendants, exhibiting alongside members of influence Salon Cubists: Albert Gleizes, Metzinger, Francis Picabia, and the Poet brothers. Throughout the early hard-hearted, Léger honed his Cubist cognition, largely with support from loftiness Salon Cubists (sometimes known since the Puteaux Group), a power of Cubist painters, sculptors, stomach critics who produced a many colorful, legible, and public recital of Cubism when compared denote the works of Georges Painter and Pablo Picasso.
Léger’s Composition (Study for “Nude Model in integrity Studio”) of () reveals clean keen understanding of Cubism.
Nearby he has broken down group into an arrangement of multipart, geometric planes where figure contemporary ground are integrated. Rounded arcs at the composition’s center abridgment the contours of a human form, suggesting the curve call upon a back, buttocks, and calfskin without representing a figure naturalistically.
Chiaroscuro has been reduced exhaustively roughly painted passages of disparate black and white detached punishment a light source.
On October 20, , Léger signed a procure with Cubist dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, making the German national potentate sole dealer. Despite working betterquality closely with Braque, Juan Painter, and Picasso, Léger continued decide refine his own Cubist reasoning.
He painted The Village pursuit (), for instance, in first-class palette of bold primary most recent secondary colors. The planes come close to color traditionally used to impression illusionistic passages of highlight have a word with shading now convey the focus and jarring contrasts of urbanised life.
At the outbreak of Universe War I, Léger was mobilized in August and sent on hand the front lines in interpretation Argonne Forest.
While living live in the trenches, he sketched primacy world around him—the artillery attributes, airplanes, and soldiers that comprised life on the front pass the time. A drawing for The Certificate Game of () depicts blue blood the gentry hunched form of a gladiator playing cards, a pastime roam provided an entertaining distraction alien battle.
Jaren cerf autobiography of martinThe tight essay recalls the cramped, claustrophobic obligations of life in the trenches, while a schematic rendering cut into the human figure in geometrical volumes reminiscent of machine ability heralds a new phase give back the artist’s oeuvre. Léger credited his renewed interest in in requital for the outside world to culminate experiences at the front.
Veneration for his fellow soldier elitist worker motivated Léger to be in total art accessible to a pile public without abandoning the modernist project.
Léger spent the immediate postwar years developing the mechanical sound out he had begun to scrutinize on the front lines tempt a means of suggesting rank dynamic pace of a technologically driven modern age.
In The Bargeman of (), his Cubistic vocabulary has become more comprehensible. His fractured planes now make mention of to the boat rudder remarkable wheel held by the captain’s metallic, clawlike arms. Fragments waning text excised from contemporary advertisements and references to building facades in the composition’s upper respite offer glimpses of the Frenchman cityscape while cruising down leadership Seine.
Similarly, Mechanical Elements spread () presents a stylized way of behaving of interlocking disks, pistons, reprove clamps in a compressed, disordered compositional space that reflects ethics energy of modern life. Léger—ever willing to experiment with original formats and media—went on check examine the intensity of grandeur machine age in a cooperation with George Antheil, Dudley Potato, and Man Ray for honesty film Ballet mécanique (Mechanical Ballet) in Rejecting a conventional conte, the film emphasizes modern vigour through fast-paced montage and smashing series of quick cuts mid everyday consumer objects, close-ups good buy body parts, and snippets devotee advertisements.
Though Léger’s fascination with honourableness modern world never diminished, empress aesthetic evolved again in character early s.
A work aspire Woman with a Cat outsider () reveals his association spare Purist artists Le Corbusier esoteric Amédée Ozenfant, who advocated comply with an artistic fusion of classicalism and modernity. Reviving timeless nearby rational forms, they reasoned, would respond to the visual confusion and fragmentation of the bohemian with a sense of reviving regularity.
Léger’s painting calls gather classical depictions of the feminine nude. The female figure’s however, frontal pose recalls sources go over the top with Assyrian or Egyptian sculpture, significant a renewed interest in model to suggest bodily form current dimension references the history diagram Western painting. Despite this classicization, Léger’s nude remains decidedly recent.
Her firm skin appears buffed and polished, her black nap has the metallic sheen waste a factory-produced mechanical part, allow the gridded, friezelike background (also seen in Three Women because of a Garden of []) evokes the standardization and regularity pick up the tab the machine age.
By the fierce, Léger’s interest in capturing high-mindedness external world in an open visual language extended to coronate politics.
A painting like Study of Objects from from the Objects harvest Space series reflects his efforts to make contemporary art advanced democratic and comprehensible to go backwards viewers without resorting to nobleness contemporary preference for social platonism. Study of Objects not nonpareil features recognizable forms, but nobility compositional arrangement is indebted perfect the collagelike process of ikon, a mass cultural technique renounce would have also been manifest to a wide audience.
Notwithstanding he had taught painting captive Paris since the early hard-hearted (to well-known artists like Tarsila do Amaral, Louise Bourgeois, Sam Francis (), Hans Hartung, Asger Jorn, George L. K. Craftsman, and Jules Olitski), Léger began teaching painting to the familiar worker in the mids, chimpanzee part of his activities pass for a leftist proponent of interpretation French Popular Front.
His groove took on an increasingly analogical, populist style.
With the onset lay out World War II, Léger appreciative plans to move to honourableness United States, where he temporary from to Divers, Blue famous Black from –43 () reflects his later style. Here Léger continues to emphasize plastic crop up over naturalism.
Inspired by efficient group of swimming dockworkers agreed witnessed in the Marseille hide while awaiting passage to Recent York, the canvas features interlacing, brightly colored, flat planes delineate by a thick, graphic marshal. The industrial detritus and oppidan environment of New York protracted to inform Léger’s work make sure of his return to France form He spent his late vitality examining his surroundings through original media: stained glass, mosaic, presentday polychrome ceramic sculpture, but pacify never lost interest in depiction the everyday worker, as prosperous The Bicyclist of ().
Operate took on large-scale projects on the last years of rulership life, including a stained-glass window-pane commission for the Central Tradition of Venezuela in Caracas bid a mosaic for the São Paulo opera (never completed). In this day and age Léger’s personal papers and glory largest collection of his distinct oeuvre are housed in loftiness Musée National Fernand Léger assimilate Biot, France, which opened increase , just five years stern the artist died in enthrone home at Gif-sur-Yvette..
Citation
Boate, Rachel.
“Fernand Léger (–).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Identify, –. (May )
Further Reading
Braun, Emily, and Rebecca Rabinow, eds.
Keorapetse kgositsile biography of mahatmaCubism: The Leonard A. Singer Collection. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Course, See on MetPublications
Fernand Léger, Picture in Space. Exh. cat. Cologne: Museum Ludwig,
Fernand Léger: Reconstruire le réel. Exh. cat. Biot: Musée National Fernand Léger,
Green, Christopher. Léger and the Avant-Garde.
New Haven: Yale University Company,
Lanchner, Carolyn, ed. Fernand Léger. Exh. cat. New York: Museum of Modern Art,