1913-1918 3 exceptional works by Fernand Leger

gerard van weyenbergh
16 hours ago
3 min read

Painted in 1913, this Contraste de formes, belongs to a series of paintings that changed forever the way we look at art. Across the course of just a few months, in a sequence of some fourteen canvases dedicated to an uninhibited exploration of dynamic contrast, Léger advanced beyond the formal and intellectual daring of Cubism into a visual language that even abandoned the representational concerns of his contemporaries Picasso and Braque. Instead Léger made pure, abstract shapes and colors, hinged on a network of forceful lines, his only subject. Henceforth, Léger believed, with the growing presence of photography and cinema in modern lives, the real value of any work of art must rest in qualities independent of imitation. The Contrastes de formes have long been considered cornerstones of important collections of modern art and thus nearly all examples from the series are today housed in major institutions. The present painting, which was originally acquired from Léger at the end of 1913 by his dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, was bought over sixty years ago from Galerie Rosengart in Lucerne. It has remained in the same family’s possession since then.

Sold in Christie's $ 70M in 2017

Contraste de formes

signed and dated 'F. LÉGER (1913)' (on the reverse)

oil on burlap

36 3/8 x 28 7/8 in. (92.4 x 73.2 cm.)

Painted in 1913

The years 1910-1914, those immediately preceding the outbreak of the First World War, marked the ascendancy of cubism as the unrivaled impetus in progressive modern painting. The culmination of collective artistic activity came with the second Section d'Or exhibition in a gallery on the rue de la Boétie in October 1912, assembled by the Puteaux group which centered around the brothers Marcel Duchamp and Jacques Villon. Including more than 200 works by 30 artists -- the Duchamp brothers, Fernand Léger, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Francis Picabia, Juan Gris, Francis Picabia, Frantisek Kupka and Alexander Archipenko -- the exhibition, in its diversity, was intended to demonstrate the strength, maturity and potential of the Cubist movement. In fact, it became clear that the young artists who took up the cubist banner had less in common than at first met the eye, so that one might wonder if it were a coherent movement at all.

Sold in Christie's $ 22M in 2003

La femme en rouge et vert

signed, dated and titled 'FEMME EN ROUGE ET VERT F. LEGER 14' (on the reverse)

oil on canvas

39½ x 31¾ in. (100.8 x 80.4 cm.)

Painted in 1914

1918: Peace. Man, exasperated, tensed, depersonalised for four years, finally raised his head, opened his eyes, looked around, relaxed, and rediscovered his taste for life. A frenzy of dancing, of spending... able at last to walk upright, to shout, to fight, to waste... Living forces, now unleashed, filled the world.

'The yellow canary and the red flower are still there, but one no longer sees them: through the open window, the wall across the street, violently coloured, comes into your house. Enormous letters, figures twelve feet high, are hurled into the apartment. Colour takes over. It is going to dominate everyday life. One will have to adjust to it' (F. Léger, Functions of Painting, ed. E.F. Fry, London, 1973, p. 120).