Fernand Leger

French Painter

1881-1955

He was originally trained as an architect's draughtsman and photographic

retoucher.

Having failed the entrance exam to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1903, he studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and the Academie Julian.

In 1909 he ranked as one of the three major Cubists

He renounced abstraction during the First World War, when he claimed to have discovered the beauty of common objects, which he described as 'everyday poetic images.'

The City1919

Oil on Canvas, 7' 7" x 9' 1/2" This is one of Leger’s earlier works. He began with an apprenticeship in Analytic Cubism, and with this he used lightly tinted planes, solid fixed shapes, and profiles that suggested machine-like parts. In this work, he used light color and overlapping planes to represent the new and modern city that was beginning to emerge in the 20th century. He made the planes appear as if they were coming at the viewer in fragments, much like a city seems to the people in it. There are never clear and defined pictures in the city, rather the people see only fragments of what is passing by. Random pieces of billboards and stenciled figures appear to the viewer as they would if they were walking by and only seeing glimpses of the things that surrounded them. The figures that are shown are very robotic in nature. Leger took an urban event and used a cubist vocabulary to explain it.