Fernand Leger

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Fernand Leger

• French Painter
• 1881-1955

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

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• 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.

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• In 1909 he ranked as one of the three major
  Cubists

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• 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.'

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The City1919Oil on Canvas, 7' 7" x 9' 1/2"

• This is one of Legers 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.

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