LaurieAnnie's photos with the keyword: Leger

The Builders 1920 Object Details Title: The Builders Artist: Fernand Léger (French, Argentan 1881–1955 Gif-sur-Yvette) Date: 1920 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 25 3/8 x 36 1/4 in. (64.5 x 92.1 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, 2006 Accession Number: 2006.32.36 The quintessential painter of the machine age, Léger observed the effects of modern technology in the trenches as a solider in the French army during World War I. Featuring workers whose bodies appear to be assembled from standardized industrial parts, The Builders exemplifies the style that Léger developed after the war to convey his belief that all of modern life was succumbing to the machine. He wrote in a letter in 1922, "The contemporary environment is clearly the manufactured and ‘mechanical’ object; this is slowly subjugating the breasts and curves of women, fruit, the soft landscape." Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/490201

The Builders 1920 Object Details Title: The Builders Artist: Fernand Léger (French, Argentan 1881–1955 Gif-sur-Yvette) Date: 1920 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 25 3/8 x 36 1/4 in. (64.5 x 92.1 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection, Gift of Muriel Kallis Newman, 2006 Accession Number: 2006.32.36 The quintessential painter of the machine age, Léger observed the effects of modern technology in the trenches as a solider in the French army during World War I. Featuring workers whose bodies appear to be assembled from standardized industrial parts, The Builders exemplifies the style that Léger developed after the war to convey his belief that all of modern life was succumbing to the machine. He wrote in a letter in 1922, "The contemporary environment is clearly the manufactured and ‘mechanical’ object; this is slowly subjugating the breasts and curves of women, fruit, the soft landscape." Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/490201

Typographer (Final State) Fernand Léger, French, 1881 - 1955 Geography: Made in France, Europe Date: 1919 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 51 5/16 x 38 3/8 inches (130.3 x 97.5 cm) Copyright: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Curatorial Department: Modern Art Accession Number: 1950-134-125 Credit Line: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950 Additional information: Publication: Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art Typographer (Final State) was made during an important transitional period in Léger's career, between the creation of his Cubist compositions from before World War I and the mechanized forms of modern industrial life that he began painting in 1918. In this dynamic, densely packed, brightly colored composition, machine-like forms combine to suggest the shape of a human figure. The title of this painting most likely refers to the typographers with whom Léger worked on poet and novelist Blaise Cendrars's book J'ai tué (I Have Killed; 1918), which the artist illustrated with tubular-shaped soldiers and sleek machines. Léger produced many studies and four complete versions of this painting before producing this one. He went on to experiment with a wide range of mediums during his prolific career, from mural painting and film to theater sets and ceramics, with an ever greater emphasis on creating an easily accessible realism. Emily Hage, from Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art (2007), p. 128. Text from: www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51041.html?mulR=539887631|21

The City Fernand Léger, French, 1881 - 1955 Geography: Made in France, Europe Date: 1919 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 7 feet 7 inches x 9 feet 9 1/2 inches (231.1 x 298.4 cm) Copyright: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Curatorial Department: Modern Art Accession Number: 1952-61-58 Credit Line: A. E. Gallatin Collection, 1952 Label: This painting captures the staccato rhythms of a modern urban environment, and the broad panorama of its buildings, scaffolding, and bridges. These architectural elements are punctuated by such signs of city life as shop window mannequins, rounded plumes of smoke, and a telephone pole, all rendered in bold, vibrant colors. Léger even included his own initials, "F L," among the array of stenciled letters, evoking the colorful billboard posters of the time. Additional information: Publication: Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections Fernand Léger has been aptly called the preeminent painter of the modern city. He developed his brightly colored, machine-inspired style at a time when cities, including his native Paris, were taking shape as the dynamic complexes of sensation we experience today. The City is Léger's master statement celebrating the vitality of modern urban life. In it he has synthesized identifiable facts of the city's appearance--billboards, apartment buildings, scaffolding, billowing smoke, and a telephone pole--with irregular abstract shapes in vivid hues. The clash, overlap, and rapid jumps among the shapes and colors borrow from the cinematic techniques of quickly cutting between scenes, and the inclusiveness of the composition resembles the panoramic sweep of a movie camera. This is not so much a particular city represented as the essence of the urban center as a site of overwhelming simultaneous impressions. John B. Ravenal, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 315. Publication: Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art The staccato rhythm of Léger's The City produces the sensation of living in or moving through a machine-age urban environment. Visual and aural stimuli condense into a kaleidoscope of shallow, overlapping planes, signs, and fragments. The abbreviated city sights, mechanical elements, and abstract forms deliberately lack natural continuity or sequential coherence. The monumental scale of the canvas envelops the viewer like a theater backdrop, inviting us to join the mechanized figures climbing the staircase in the foreground in order to enter this bustling modern metropolis. The fragmented cityscape is illuminated by the intensity of Léger's palette—vivid hues suggesting the dazzle of modern advertising and the glare of street lighting. The taut, geometric composition is built up with distinct areas of flat, unmodulated colors that produce depth and movement without resorting to the traditional chiaroscuro method of modeling light and shade. The scaffolding, buildings, steel structures, bridges, billboards, shopwindow mannequins in silhouette, rounded plumes of smoke, and telephone pole are rendered in primary reds, yellows, and blues contrasting with vibrant greens, purples, and grays. Passages of black and white separate the blocks of pure tones into individual compartments, with contrasts and ruptures evoking the density of the city. The pungent blacks provide graphic clarity, while the extensive use of white provides an optical light that appears to burn from within the picture. The artist has included his own initials, "F L," among the chaotic jumble of stenciled letters, recalling the colorful posters of the Place de Clichy, where Parisians are bombarded by a deluge of advertising billboards and commercial signs. Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2000), p. 53. Provenance: A. E. Gallatin, New York, purchased from the artist, with the assistance of George L. K. Morris, 1936 [1]; bequest to PMA, 1952. 1. See letter of January 1937 in which Léger informs Gallatin that the painting has been shipped (Gallatin Papers, New York Historical Society, microfilm). Morris owned a half share of the painting (along with Picasso's "Three Musicians"), which he later sold to the Gallatin estate; see Gail Stavitsky, The Development, Institutionalization, and Impact of the A. E. Gallatin Collection of Modern Art [Ph.D. dissertation, New York University], 1990, v. 2, p. 356-357, and v. 7, p. 143. Text from: www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/53928.html?mulR=1548752025|5

The Bargeman 1918 Object Details Title: The Bargeman Artist: Fernand Léger (French, Argentan 1881–1955 Gif-sur-Yvette) Date: 1918 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 19 1/4 × 21 1/2 in. (48.9 × 54.6 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 Accession Number: 1999.363.35 Along with Picasso, Braque, and Gris, Fernand Léger ranks among the foremost Cubist painters. By 1912, he had developed his own adaptation of Cubism. Utilizing pure color, he simplified the forms in his pictures into geometric components of the cone, cube, and sphere, leaving their contours unbroken. Leger was also fascinated by machines and modern technology. The Bargeman, which shows a boat set against a background dominated by the facades of houses, provided the artist with the opportunity to combine several of his favorite themes: motion, the city, and men at work. With colorful and overlapping disks, cylinders, cones, and diagonals, Léger presents a syncopated, abstract equivalent of the visual impressions of a man traveling along the Seine through Paris. All that can be seen of the bargeman, however, are his tube-like arms, in the upper part of the composition, which end in metallic-looking claws. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489988

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881–1955) Divers, Blue and Black 1942-43 Oil on canvas Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 (1999.363.37) Entangled figures plunge into broad swatches of color like swimmers in a crowded pool. The inspiration for Divers dates to 1940, while Leger was in Marseille awaiting passage to the United States, where he would stay until the end of World War II. Leger's interest in the theme of the swimming pool lasted beyond his sojourn in America and resulted in a series of about twenty-five works. Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.

Mechanical Elements, 1920 Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955) Oil on canvas; 36 1/8 x 23 1/2 in. (91.8 x 59.7 cm) Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 (1999.363.36) Léger was one of the most prominent and prolific artists working in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century. He was first associated with the avant-garde in 1909, when he exhibited his work at the Salon d'Automne in the company of artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Constantin Brancusi. His early mature work was strongly influenced by Cubism and, after serving in World War I, he developed a personal style of abstraction that further manifested the speed and dynamism of contemporary society. Léger's "mechanical period," which lasted from about 1918 to 1923, reflects his infatuation with the machine and with modern technology. Works from this period are characterized by recurring interchangeable geometric elements—among them, the cone, the cylinder, and the disk—that seem suspended in a completely flat or shallow, relieflike space. Actually, none of these works depicts identifiable mechanical parts, but, instead, each is meant to evoke the impersonality of a new machine age. In this picture, we are confronted with a rather cheerful and decorative mechanized world of abstracted joints, pistons, and levers. Set against a framework of thick, black horizontal and vertical lines, Léger's "mechanical elements" are composed of tightly interlocking circles, ellipses, curves, diagonals, rectangles, dots, and groups of parallel wavy lines. In their syncopated arrangement, these brightly colored forms bring to mind the urban architecture, new modes of transportation, and time-saving technologies that were transforming the modern world. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/geab/ho_1999.363.36.htm

Ferdinand Leger. French, 1881-1955. Three Women by a Garden 1922 Oil on canvas Accession # 1987.125.1 Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.

Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955) Woman with a Cat, 1921 Oil on canvas; H. 51-3/8, W. 35-1/4 in. (130.5 x 89.5 cm.) Gift of Florene M. Schoenborn, 1994 (1994.486) As a young man in France, Fernand Léger was apprenticed to an architect (1897–99), then worked as an architectural draftsman (1900–02) and a photographic retoucher (1903–04). He studied art at the École des Arts Décoratifs and the Académie Julian in Paris. Along with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris, Léger ranks among the foremost Cubist painters of the teens. Even after the height of Cubism, his paintings continued to utilize pure color and to employ forms that had been simplified into the geometric components of the cone, cube, and sphere. After World War I, when Léger became friends with Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant, who were leaders of the Purist movement in Paris (ca. 1918–ca. 1925), his work exemplified the "machine aesthetic." "Woman with a Cat" belongs to a group of monumental female figures — some reading, others drinking cups of tea — that are emblematic of the artist's new grand figure style from his "mechanica" period of 1918–23. These works might be seen as preparatory for his large masterpiece "Three Women (Le Grand Déjeuner)" of 1921 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and its two smaller variants. Léger also painted variations of the single-figure composition and made a slightly smaller, nearly identical version of "Woman with a Cat" (Kunsthalle, Hamburg). Motionless, hierarchic, and frontal, this colossal creature seems made of some undefinable rubberized substance. The powerful large nude woman, painted in grisaille, is composed of spheres, cones, and tubes. She leans against billowing pillows — one off-white, the other a black-and-yellow diamond pattern. A yellow blanket protects her lap, upon which rests an open book and a cat. Her mane of black hair covers half of her white spherical face. The stark simplicity of the composition is matched by the reduced palette of red, yellow, black, and white. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/Woman_...

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). Woman with a Book. 1923. Oil on canvas, 45 3/4 x 32 1/8" (116 x 81.4 cm). Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest. Gallery label text 2007 "I had broken down the human body, so I set about putting it together again," Léger said. The smooth surfaces of this volumetric woman, bunch of flowers, and book evoke mechanical parts assembled together. The metallic sheen and tight geometry are stylistic treatments that recur in many of Léger's paintings of this period. After World War I he recast established subjects and themes the still–life, the figure, and interior scenes in simplified forms and primary colors, offering solid, enduring images as France recovered from the devastation of the war. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80425

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). The Mirror. 1925. Oil on canvas, 51 x 39 1/4" (129.6 x 99.6 cm). Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80147

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). The Mirror. 1925. Oil on canvas, 51 x 39 1/4" (129.6 x 99.6 cm). Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80147

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). Three Women. 1921. Oil on canvas, 6' 1/4" x 8' 3" (183.5 x 251.5 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Gallery label text 2006 This painting represents a group of three reclining nudes drinking tea or coffee in a chic apartment. While the reclining nude is a common subject in art history, these women’s bodies have been simplified into rounded and dislocated forms, their skin not soft but firm, buffed, and polished. The machinelike precision and solidity with which Léger renders human form relates to his faith in modern industry and to his hope that art and the machine age would together reverse the chaos unleashed by World War I. Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 100 In Three Women, Léger translates a common theme in art history—the reclining nude—into a modern idiom, simplifying the female figure into a mass of rounded and somewhat dislocated forms, the skin not soft but firm, even unyielding. The machinelike precision and solidity that Léger gives his women's bodies relate to his faith in modern industry, and to his hope that art and the machine age would together remake the world. The painting's geometric equilibrium, its black bands and panels of white, suggest his awareness of Mondrian, an artist then becoming popular. Another stylistic trait is the return to variants of classicism, which was widespread in French art after the chaos of World War I. Though buffed and polished, the simplified volumes of Lger's figures are, nonetheless, in the tradition of classicists of the previous century. A group of naked women taking tea, or coffee, together may also recall paintings of harem scenes, for example, by Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres, although there the drink might be wine. Updating the repast, Léger also updates the setting—a chic apartment, decorated with fashionable vibrancy. And the women, with their flat-ironed hair hanging to one side, have a Hollywood glamour. The painting is like a beautiful engine, its parts meshing smoothly and in harmony. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O:AD:...

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). Three Women. 1921. Oil on canvas, 6' 1/4" x 8' 3" (183.5 x 251.5 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Gallery label text 2006 This painting represents a group of three reclining nudes drinking tea or coffee in a chic apartment. While the reclining nude is a common subject in art history, these women’s bodies have been simplified into rounded and dislocated forms, their skin not soft but firm, buffed, and polished. The machinelike precision and solidity with which Léger renders human form relates to his faith in modern industry and to his hope that art and the machine age would together reverse the chaos unleashed by World War I. Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 100 In Three Women, Léger translates a common theme in art history—the reclining nude—into a modern idiom, simplifying the female figure into a mass of rounded and somewhat dislocated forms, the skin not soft but firm, even unyielding. The machinelike precision and solidity that Léger gives his women's bodies relate to his faith in modern industry, and to his hope that art and the machine age would together remake the world. The painting's geometric equilibrium, its black bands and panels of white, suggest his awareness of Mondrian, an artist then becoming popular. Another stylistic trait is the return to variants of classicism, which was widespread in French art after the chaos of World War I. Though buffed and polished, the simplified volumes of Lger's figures are, nonetheless, in the tradition of classicists of the previous century. A group of naked women taking tea, or coffee, together may also recall paintings of harem scenes, for example, by Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres, although there the drink might be wine. Updating the repast, Léger also updates the setting—a chic apartment, decorated with fashionable vibrancy. And the women, with their flat-ironed hair hanging to one side, have a Hollywood glamour. The painting is like a beautiful engine, its parts meshing smoothly and in harmony. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O:AD:...

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). Three Women. 1921. Oil on canvas, 6' 1/4" x 8' 3" (183.5 x 251.5 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Gallery label text 2006 This painting represents a group of three reclining nudes drinking tea or coffee in a chic apartment. While the reclining nude is a common subject in art history, these women’s bodies have been simplified into rounded and dislocated forms, their skin not soft but firm, buffed, and polished. The machinelike precision and solidity with which Léger renders human form relates to his faith in modern industry and to his hope that art and the machine age would together reverse the chaos unleashed by World War I. Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 100 In Three Women, Léger translates a common theme in art history—the reclining nude—into a modern idiom, simplifying the female figure into a mass of rounded and somewhat dislocated forms, the skin not soft but firm, even unyielding. The machinelike precision and solidity that Léger gives his women's bodies relate to his faith in modern industry, and to his hope that art and the machine age would together remake the world. The painting's geometric equilibrium, its black bands and panels of white, suggest his awareness of Mondrian, an artist then becoming popular. Another stylistic trait is the return to variants of classicism, which was widespread in French art after the chaos of World War I. Though buffed and polished, the simplified volumes of Lger's figures are, nonetheless, in the tradition of classicists of the previous century. A group of naked women taking tea, or coffee, together may also recall paintings of harem scenes, for example, by Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres, although there the drink might be wine. Updating the repast, Léger also updates the setting—a chic apartment, decorated with fashionable vibrancy. And the women, with their flat-ironed hair hanging to one side, have a Hollywood glamour. The painting is like a beautiful engine, its parts meshing smoothly and in harmony. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O:AD:...

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). Three Women. 1921. Oil on canvas, 6' 1/4" x 8' 3" (183.5 x 251.5 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. Gallery label text 2006 This painting represents a group of three reclining nudes drinking tea or coffee in a chic apartment. While the reclining nude is a common subject in art history, these women’s bodies have been simplified into rounded and dislocated forms, their skin not soft but firm, buffed, and polished. The machinelike precision and solidity with which Léger renders human form relates to his faith in modern industry and to his hope that art and the machine age would together reverse the chaos unleashed by World War I. Publication excerpt The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 100 In Three Women, Léger translates a common theme in art history—the reclining nude—into a modern idiom, simplifying the female figure into a mass of rounded and somewhat dislocated forms, the skin not soft but firm, even unyielding. The machinelike precision and solidity that Léger gives his women's bodies relate to his faith in modern industry, and to his hope that art and the machine age would together remake the world. The painting's geometric equilibrium, its black bands and panels of white, suggest his awareness of Mondrian, an artist then becoming popular. Another stylistic trait is the return to variants of classicism, which was widespread in French art after the chaos of World War I. Though buffed and polished, the simplified volumes of Lger's figures are, nonetheless, in the tradition of classicists of the previous century. A group of naked women taking tea, or coffee, together may also recall paintings of harem scenes, for example, by Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres, although there the drink might be wine. Updating the repast, Léger also updates the setting—a chic apartment, decorated with fashionable vibrancy. And the women, with their flat-ironed hair hanging to one side, have a Hollywood glamour. The painting is like a beautiful engine, its parts meshing smoothly and in harmony. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O:AD:...

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). Contrast of Forms. 1913. Oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 32" (100.3 x 81.1 cm). The Philip L. Goodwin Collection. Text from: www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=78788

Fernand Léger. (French, 1881-1955). Propellers. 1918. Oil on canvas, 31 7/8 x 25 3/4" (80.9 x 65.4 cm). Katherine S. Dreier Bequest. Text from www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79039