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Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"Fernand Léger failed his entrance exam to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, so instead studied independently at the Académie Julian. His most lasting achievement was developing the Post-Cubist offshoot “Tubism” (by 1913). Tubism modifies Cubism (or the depiction of a subject from multiple, fractured viewpoints simultaneously to suggest a passage of time) to include curving and cylindrical forms.
Living in the Montparnasse area of France (c. 1910), Léger befriended its circle of artists and intellectuals including Matisse, Braque, Picasso, Max Jacob, Juan Gris, and Apollinaire. He met with the Cubist circle at Jacques Villon-Duchamp’s studio and exhibited with the famous Section d’Or painters’ collective (Galerie de la Boétie, 1912). Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, the art dealer responsible for championing Cubism, discovered Léger, giving him a one-person show in 1912.
After a WWI German mustard gas attack released Léger from service (1917), he met Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, the developers of “Purism.” Purism concerns itself with mechanical forms and the aesthetically balanced golden section. Léger’s interest in machinery and movement lasted all his life. In 1923 Léger extended his exploration of machine-like visuals, collaborating with Dudley Murphey to create one of the earliest art movies, Ballet mécanique – centered on simple mechanical objects.
While living in New York from 1940-46 Léger’s style grew more complex. His previously modeled volumes flattened into decorative, brilliantly colored patterns bounded by heavy black contours. He continued his focus on the contrast between cylindrical and rectilinear form and use of mechanical subjects. Léger’s later career, spent back in France, consisted mostly of large, decorative commissions for churches and public buildings including windows and tapestries for the Church at Audincourt (1951) and glass mosaics for the University of Caracas (1954).
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Descriptive LabelLabel
"Early in his career, Léger was associated with the Cubists, although his tubular and curvilinear abstractions contrasted with the rectilinear forms preferred by Cubism's founders Picasso and Braque. When Léger made his first prints in 1920 he had become associated with the Purist movement and his work exemplified the ""machine aesthetic"" which Purism stood for. His work is noted for its flat, unmodulated colors, heavy black contours and a continuing concern with the contrast between cylindrical and rectilinear forms.
During his stint in World War l, Léger came in contact with men of different social classes and different walks of life and this was a revelation to him. Thereafter it was his ambition to create art that would be accessible to all ranks of modern society. He saw the poetic value of everyday objects, the intrinsic beauty of modern machinery and the things which are mass produced by machinery, and he favored proletarian subjects, depicting them with the same clarity and precision as the themes taken from machine culture. Because of his attitude toward his 20th century environment and his decision to select his subjects from the industrial world, Léger's post- Cubist work had a vital effect on younger artists, foremost among them was Stuart Davis."