Fernand Leger
From Philosopedia
Fernand Léger (4 February 1881 - 17 August 1955)
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger, a painter, sculptor, and filmmaker, was born in Argentan, Orne, France. After apprenticing with an architect in Caen from 1897 to 1899, Léger settled in Paris in 1900 and supported himself as an architectural draftsman. He was refused entrance to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but nevertheless attended classes there beginning in 1903; he also studied at the Académie Julian. Léger’s earliest known works, which date from 1905, were primarily influenced by Impressionism. The experience of seeing the Paul Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d’Automne in 1907 and his contact with the early Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque had an extremely significant impact on the development of his personal style. In 1911 he joined with several other artists to form the Puteaux Group, an offshoot of the Cubist movement. From 1911 to 1914, Léger’s work became increasingly abstract, and he started to limit his color to the primaries and black and white. In 1912, he was given his first solo show at Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris.
He studied in Paris, helping to form the Cubist movement. Later, he developed his own "aesthetic of the machine" as seen in Contrast of Forms (1913). He also designed theatre sets, taught at Yale University, and painted murals for the UN building in New York (1952)
In 1923, he collaborated on the first "art film," Le Ballet mécanique. That year, he wrote, of World War I (the "war to end all wars"): "The war has thrust me, as a soldier, into the heart of a mechanical atmosphere. Here I discovered the beauty of the fragment."
A museum dedicated to his work was opened in 1960 at Biot on the Côte d'Azur.
According to Robert T. Buck's Fernand Léger (New York: Abbeville Publishers (1982),
- Upon his return to France in 1945, he joined the Communist Party. During this period his work became less abstract, and he produced many monumental figure compositions depicting scenes of popular life featuring acrobats, builders, divers, and country outings. Charlotta Kotik has pointed out that Leger's "determination to depict the common man, as well as to create for him, was a result of socialist theories widespread among the avant-garde both before and after World War II. However, Léger's social conscience was not that of a fierce Marxist, but of a passionate humanist.
His varied projects included book illustrations, murals, stained-glass windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures, and set and costume designs.
New York writer about art, John Haber, has commented that Léger's dream of humanity led many to associate Humanism with the fight against Communism or capitalism. He describes him as a "Cubist who found Communism and lost it again in America.
When his wife died in 1950, he married Khodossevitch in 1952. In his final years he lectured in Bern, designed mosaics and stained-glass windows for the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela. Although he started a mosaic project for the São Paulo Opera, he died before finishing it. Léger died at his home in 1955 and is buried in the Cimetière de Gif Sur Yvette in Essone, France.
