Artist of the day: Artist of the day, March 5: Fernand Léger, French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker

Monday, March 5, 2018

Artist of the day, March 5: Fernand Léger, French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (1881 – 1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of pop art.

In 1913, he started a series of abstract paintings called "Contrast of Forms." He ventured to make his first film in 1924. By the 1930s, he had increasingly incorporated elements of modernism in his work. During the 1940s, he produced a series of paintings called "Divers”

Léger embraced the Cubist notion of fracturing objects into geometric shapes, but retained an interest in depicting the illusion of three-dimensionality. Léger's unique brand of Cubism was also distinguished by his focus on cylindrical form and his use of robot-like human figures that expressed harmony between humans and machines.

Influenced by the chaos of urban spaces and his interest in brilliant, primary color, Léger sought to express the noise, dynamism, and speed of new technology and machinery often creating a sense of movement in his paintings that captured the optimism of the pre-World War I period.

In its embrace of recognizable subject matter and the illusion of three dimensionality interspersed with or often simultaneous with experiments in abstraction and non-representation, Léger's work synchronizes the often competing dualities in much of twentieth-century art.