FERNAND LEGER

August 11, 2016

The Smokers

Contrast of Forms

modern and popular

themes. The visual impact of advertising inspired The (1919), while other

canvases depicted propellers and other machine parts. Even the human figure became

shiny and metallic, as in the monumental Three Women (Le Grand Dejeuner) (1921),

though here the three nudes also evoke the classical tradition in Western painting.

's commitment to collectivist principles led him to take up some prominent

public commissions for murals in Paris. In 1925 he collaborated at the Exposition

internationale des arts et industriels modernes with Robert Delaunay and

Amédée Ozenfant, whose Purist ideas on the integration of art and architecture

influenced at this time. This project was followed 12 years later by a mural

depicting the industrial and natural worlds at the Palais de la découverte in the

Exposition internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne. Here he

collaborated with a team of his students, in a manner more reminiscent of a

Renaissance workshop than a workers' cooperative.

After spending World War II in the United States, returned to France in 1946,

where he produced pictures with a strong political element. These included Leisure

(Homage to Jacques-Louis David) (1948-9) and other striking paintings of the common

man. He exhibited some of these in a Renault factory canteen, to a mixed reception.

Ultimately, his work represented the people in an idiom that appealed to the elite.

Book: Great Modern Artists, by: Andy Tuohy with Christopher Masters.