Fernand Léger
Composition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand Leger
1950

Name: Composition, Cirque (Saphire 44-106), Fernand Leger
Brand: Fernand Léger
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Original Limited Edition Lithograph on Arches paper. Edition: 300. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Excellent condition; with centerfold, as issued. Notes: From the volume, Cirque, Lithographies originales. Published by Tériade Editeur, Les Éditions Verve, Paris; printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris, 1950. Cirque was originally conceived as a collaboration between Fernand Léger and the novelist Henry Miller. At a time when the two were interested in working together, the publisher Efstratios Tériade Léger approached Leger to make prints for an artist’s book. Tériade hoped to publish a series of such books with the circus as the theme. Léger was a circus enthusiast who often used circus images in his paintings. He often went to the Cirque Médrano in Paris and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in New York. He agreed to the project and suggested that Miller write the text. Miller wrote a tragic tale of a disenchanted clown (published as The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder), which Tériade rejected. He had published two earlier circus-related projects, Rouault’s Divertissement and Matisse’s Jazz. Both artists had written their texts, so he asked Léger to write Cirque. Léger wrote about life and art framed within the context of the circle, which he saw as symbolic of wholeness, continuity and freedom. To Léger the circus and the circle were inseparable: “What is a circus if not a machine that produces circles? …acrobats, horseback riders, bicycles, clowns, animals—on a perfectly round ring …Go to the circus, quit your rectangles…and you go to the land of circles in action.” FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955) 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. 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. In 1909, he moved to Montparnasse and met Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz, Marc Chagall, Joseph Csaky and Robert Delaunay. In 1910, he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in the same room (salle VIII) as Jean Metzinger and Henri Le Fauconnier. In his major painting of this period, Nudes in the Forest, Léger displays a personal form of Cubism that his critics termed "Tubism" for its emphasis on cylindrical forms. In 1911, the hanging committee of the Salon des Indépendants placed together the painters identified as 'Cubists'. Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, Delaunay and Léger were responsible for revealing Cubism to the general public for the first time as an organized group. The following year he again exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and Indépendants with the Cubists, and joined with several artists, including Le Fauconnier, Metzinger, Gleizes, Francis Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp to form the Puteaux Group—also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section) paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract. Their tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colors plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms. Léger made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso.

Creator:

Fernand Léger (1881-1955, French)

Creation Year:

1950

Dimensions:

Height: 16.63 in (42.25 cm)Width: 25.38 in (64.47 cm)

Medium:

Lithograph

Movement & Style:

Modern

Period:

1950-1959

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Auburn Hills, MI

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU1465213985532

Shop All Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

A painter as well as a filmmaker, illustrator, stage-set designer, ceramicist and printmaker, Fernand Léger was one of the most prolific artists of the first half of the 20th century. His early mature work as a Cubist was marked by the use of bold colors and contrasts and a visual vocabulary inspired by industrial technology. In his later career, Léger turned to idiomatic, almost naïve depictions of human figures, in a belief that his work should be accessible to ordinary people and relevant to their lives.

Born in Normandy, the son of a cattle trader, Léger worked as an architectural draftsman in Paris while studying art. By 1908 he was a member of an artistic circle that included Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, and the poet Guillaume Appolinaire, and through them he became connected to the Cubists. As opposed to the flat planes and neutral hues seen in the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Léger’s Cubist abstractions were devised with vivid colors and forms that had dimensionality. Soon after his army service in World War I — he was gassed at the Battle of Verdun — Léger entered his “mechanical” period. Convinced that technology would improve the human condition, he painted compositions of tubular shapes and cylinders that are reminiscent of machine parts. In other work, Léger sought to capture the bustle and brio of modern life with references to railroad stations, factories, street signs and billboards.

Léger had also emerged from the trenches with a deep concern to make his art engage the sorts of men and women he had met during the war. He sought to bring his work to a wider audience through film, theater sets and book illustrations. In the 1920s, influenced by Purism — a variant on Cubism that promoted a simpler and more direct approach to forms and compositions — Léger produced a series of paintings depicting everyday objects: a soda siphon, an accordion, a guitar and vase. The human figure returned to his work. By 1930, pure abstraction disappeared almost completely from Léger’s art in favor of simple studies of people. Their boldly outlined forms, placed against a bright background, can be regarded as an assemblage of parts — yet in these representations of dancers, acrobats and folks on bicycles, Léger seems to be articulating a kind of kinship and affection. You will see from the works on offer why Fernand Léger is often regarded as the warmest and most humane of the great modern artists.

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